


not moonlight and roses

by lilithqueen



Category: Stand Still Stay Silent
Genre: Accidental Marriage, Canon-Typical Violence, Crack, Fluff, Kissing, M/M, okay so the premise is pretty silly but somehow this grew plot and seriousness and angry gods
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-10
Updated: 2016-07-06
Packaged: 2018-07-14 06:53:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 23,865
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7158260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilithqueen/pseuds/lilithqueen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the heat of the moment after Lalli uses his magic to save Emil’s life in battle (and incidentally does something pretty cool with a flamethrower), Emil impulsively asks Lalli to marry him. They aren’t even dating yet, but Lalli likes this idea. He likes it <em>a lot.</em> Emil is stunned to realize that he is not joking. </p><p>While our couple is happy enough, their families are not. Surely, this will not all blow up in their faces.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. not moonlight and roses

Sigrun was standing in front of him, talking. She sounded enthusiastic, but that was normal for her. As she gestured, Lalli looked up at the ancient building before them. It might once have been a school, old even before the Rash; now it was a decrepit shell, and they were going to go in and see what books they could salvage. He didn’t need to turn his head in order to see Emil hovering behind him with his flamethrower; he could _feel_ him, like a stone dropped into the still lake of his personal space. It was strangely comforting.

They stepped through the doorway carefully, single file. Sigrun was talking again, words he didn’t know, and stepping away—oh. This was another mission where they were meant to split up. Alright, then. Lalli took the left-hand corridor, conscious of Emil drifting behind him. _Does he think I can’t handle myself, or does he just not want to lose me again?_ Despite his best efforts not to think about it, the fact that he didn’t know the answer bothered him. It was highly unlikely that Emil thought he was incompetent, but the thought that he _might_ rankled.

The other option wasn’t much better. As they carefully made their way over piles of rubble and cracked tiles, Lalli almost wished there was a Beast or something to distract him from his thoughts. Fighting was better—easier—than wondering about Emil’s feelings towards him. Fighting didn’t make his stomach tie itself in knots, didn’t make something within him split and turn soft whenever Emil smiled at him, didn’t make him want to smile back. He _understood_ fighting.

And Emil was talking, which never helped. _I am convinced he just forgets I can’t understand him. It’s the only explanation that makes sense. He is_ so _weird._ The usual frustration of not being able to understand a word of it was only compounded by the way a certain tone or a glance could make his breath catch. When he abruptly laid a hand on his arm, Lalli couldn’t help but flinch.

So did Emil, making apologetic-sounding noises and pointing to—oh, to a stairwell leading down. Lalli nodded; it would be easier to preserve books away from moisture, and the area they were in was dry enough. Emil descended ahead of him, and Lalli frowned at his back. _I can see better in the dark than you can_ , he thought, but didn’t bother saying it. There was no point.

The vast room on the floor below them might have once been a basement. It looked barren, lined with empty shelves. Emil sighed heavily at the sight, patted Lalli’s arm again, and turned right. Lalli watched him go for a moment longer than he should have.

And then he went left.

There was silence except for his footsteps. He tried to breathe as quietly as possible anyway; there was no telling what could lurk in the darkest corners, and he vividly remembered the troll nests of Copenhagen. He had no wish to experience that again. _Maybe I should have stuck with Emil. Tuuri told me he tried to run back in, that time…_ It probably should have worried him. He was fairly sure that worry was not the emotion he was feeling.

Something was dripping in the darkness. He froze, heard a faint scratching, skittering noise following it. When nothing else met his ears, he dared to keep moving. The shelves were empty here, too, and he huffed through his nose. _This is a waste of time. Should fetch Emil…_

Emil’s voice. Emil, screaming.

He spun on his heel and sprinted back the way Emil had went. The basement’s bare concrete and wood gave way here and there to piles of debris, holes in the ceiling not quite letting light in but providing plenty of space for things to grow.

Things like trolls. Emil, it turned out, had found a nest, and it was angry. He almost crashed into Lalli as he ran, barely stopping himself in time to grab his hand and yelp something in Swedish—probably telling him to run, but Lalli pulled his hand away. The trolls, horrible amorphous things, were just behind him, but there didn’t seem to be that many—

He scrambled aside just as something on the ceiling made a leap for his face, barely drawing his knife in time to fight it off. Blood splattered his coat; beside him, he heard the _fwoosh_ of Emil’s flamethrower as the Swede turned to face the ones that had followed him, and spared a second to thank the gods for Cleansers.

And then he realized that the skittering noise he had heard was a whole swarm of vaguely human-shaped trolls massing on top of the empty shelves, and they were springing down to attack. There wasn’t nearly enough space for him to use his rifle. _Oh, gods damn it._

Running footsteps heralded Sigrun’s arrival a moment before she burst down the steps, shortsword in hand, and neatly separated a troll’s head from whatever passed for its shoulders before diving into the fray. Lalli thought he saw her grinning like a madwoman, teeth bared in bloodthirsty glee.

They fought in silence. Lalli’s mind went quiet, empty of everything save the need to keep moving—stab one troll, smash another into the wall until it stopped trying to get up, there was one going for his face but he wasn’t fast enough _but Sigrun was_ , be aware of where Emil was aiming that flamethrower—wait. Emil. Where was Emil? The trolls around him were dead. Lalli turned.

There were still three trolls left, and as Emil turned to face them his flamethrower spluttered. His Swedish was a very quiet, dismayed murmur.

By the time Lalli caught sight of his wide, terrified eyes, he was already in motion, mind horrifyingly blank for a few seconds until the opening lines of a runo came to him and he could clap his hands to Emil’s biceps and _focus_.

The fire roared, drowning out his chanting, but the gods heard—and answered. The gout of flame twisted in midair, leaping from one troll to the next like a springing cat; the first one shrieked and crumpled, but the next crashed, blind, into the last and they both collapsed against the wall. Flames licked at the empty shelves, and Lalli swore.

Emil had gone very, very still in his arms. Lalli could feel their hearts pounding, hear their quick, shallow breaths, and wasn’t sure which belonged to him. “…Lalli?” Words, more words, hesitant and questioning as he lowered his flamethrower.

Lalli was silent, watching the trolls burn. They didn’t have much time, he knew; if they were going to get out before the flames spread too much, they had to move. Sigrun was already sprinting for the stairs. But gods, Emil was solid and alive in his grip, and he liked it.

When he pulled away, slinging his flamethrower back over his shoulder, Lalli felt the chill. _Right. We should get out of here._ Slowly, he turned to go.

Emil turned and caught his hands in both of his own, and Lalli froze. His gaze snapped back to Emil’s face, taking in the wide, giddily excited blue eyes and the beaming grin. Something in his chest squeezed hard at the burst of excited Swedish, at the realization of how close their faces were. When Emil stopped talking, eyes going soft, Lalli swallowed hard. Rock-hard certainty flashed through his mind— _he is going to kiss me_ —and he couldn’t move. He wasn’t even sure he remembered how to breathe, not with Emil’s eyes flicking to his parted lips.

And Emil was leaning in. Lalli let his eyes close.

Sigrun’s words—sharp, annoyed—snapped them both out of their daze; blushing clear to the tips of his ears, Emil hurried towards the stairs.

He was still holding Lalli’s hand when they burst out into the sunlight, and Lalli couldn’t bring himself to be the first one to let go. The cold air stung his skin, but he still felt warm.

“Lalli!”

Well, that answered the question of whether Tuuri had seen the fire. For once, he was actually glad to see her. She could _translate_. (Part of him was terrified to find out what Emil had said when he was looking like that, his heart in his eyes. He very sternly told that part to shut up.)

Slowly, he made himself let go of Emil’s hand and walk towards the tank.

It took longer than he’d have liked to get a chance to talk to her; they all had to be checked for injuries and decontaminated, but when Sigrun was being sewn up (again) he took the opportunity to creep up into the passenger seat of the tank and wait.

Tuuri didn’t notice him. He suspected he could have dropped one of Emil’s bombs next to her face and her first concern would have been the books. He cleared his throat to get her attention. “…Tuuri?”

She looked up so suddenly she almost dropped the ancient paperback she was squinting at. “Yeah?”

“What does…” He frowned, trying to remember the Swedish words and get his tongue around them properly. It was such a weird, rough language. “’Gift dig med mig’ mean?”

Tuuri went very still, staring at him with an expression he didn’t like “…Who told you that?”

“Emil, during the fight.” For the first time, a twinge of worry flicked through his chest. “I know it wasn’t anything bad, he was _really_ excited.” _I thought he was going to kiss me._ He felt his face heat up at the thought.

She made a choking sound. “He _what?_ No. No. _Fucking_ _hell_ no. He can’t have been serious, you two aren’t even dating—wait. _Are_ you dating?”

He couldn’t even look in her direction, suddenly acutely conscious of his own pulse. Wow, the ceiling was fascinating. “No!”

“Then it was a joke—oh, I’m gonna have _words_ with him—” And then she was getting to her feet and storming out of the tank.

“Tuuri! What did he say?”

She stopped, one hand on the doorframe, and sucked in a breath through her teeth. “He asked you to marry him.”

Lalli was suddenly very glad he was sitting down. _It was a joke. Had to have been a joke. We’re not even—he doesn’t like me like that, even if he is friendly. Even if I wish he would. But if he did...I…_

After a moment, he followed Tuuri out.

\--

Emil stood in front of the burning building, watching the fire. He wasn’t sure whether the heat in his face was from the flames or the memory of what he’d said. _I can’t believe I did that. God, forgive me but I’m glad now that Lalli doesn’t speak Swedish. And I almost…_ It would have been so easy, too—so easy, with the scents of smoke and gasoline stinging his nostrils and making his pulse race—to steal a kiss. And it would have ruined everything.

 _Even if he looked like he might have wanted me to do it. I’m not sure I can take that chance._ He sighed, his breath rising in front of him in a cloud of steam.

Footsteps behind him, and Tuuri’s voice tight with anger. “Emil Västerström, _what did you do_.”

Emil’s heart plummeted into his stomach. “Um?”

He swore he could hear her folding her arms across her chest. “My cousin just told me you proposed to him.”

 _Fuck_.

She was still talking. “Now, I know you were joking—adrenaline and all—but Lalli doesn’t always understand jokes. So maybe you’d like to say something about that so I can pass it on.”

He swallowed hard, gaze fixed on the fire. It calmed his racing heart. “I…uh. Yeah. Adrenaline. Hey, look, you didn’t see him, he was incredible—so I kind of maybe got a little carried away…”

Tuuri speaking Finnish, brief and flowing, and footsteps behind him. When Lalli appeared out of the corner of his eye and slipped a cool hand into his, he jolted. “What the—”

Lalli’s lips brushed his cheek. He thought he might faint.

There was an explosion of Finnish behind him—Tuuri—and a short, answering burst from Lalli. More Finnish, incredulous and angry, and Lalli’s response sounded so calm and unruffled that Emil felt his heart flip itself up into his throat with the surge of emotion that coursed through him. He’d never thought it was possible to admire someone _so much_.

Lalli twined their fingers together, and he wrenched his gaze away from the fire to look at him. For a dizzying moment, they stared into each other’s eyes—and then Emil gathered up his courage, closing the distance between them. _Please_ , he thought, _let me not fuck this up._

Oh. Lalli was kissing him back, carefully and sweetly and a little awkwardly, before pulling away and saying something in Finnish. He felt dizzy, heart hammering against his ribs, but he could breathe again. Lalli hadn’t let go of his hand.

Tuuri screeched behind him before switching to muttered Swedish. She sounded mortally embarrassed, and Emil couldn’t blame her. “…He says…yes, if you really want to.”

Emil guessed he hadn’t fucked it up.

(The panic came later, when he got in the tank and sat down on his bunk and realized that he had just _kissed Lalli_ , they were _together_ , he’d actually _proposed_ and Lalli seemed to want to take him up on it, and he’d never actually given him an answer so what if Lalli thought he wasn’t _serious_ , when he wanted him so much he could barely breathe—)

(And then Lalli came back from the smug (on his end) and horrified (Onni’s) conversation he’d been having over the radio, sat down next to him, wordlessly pulled him over until his head came to rest on his thigh, and started combing his hair gently with bare fingers. Emil felt much better after that.)

(Even if the way Onni and Tuuri were yelling at each other in Finnish suggested that he was about to be rigorously interrogated as to his intentions. Lalli was stroking his hair with the faintest smile on his face, and Emil was sure he’d made the right choice.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Onni! Are you there?"  
> "What--yes! I'm here; are you hurt? What's the matter?"  
> Lalli took a deep breath, smirking as he caught Tuuri's eye. She still looked horrified. "I'm getting _married_."  
>  Silence. Silence on the other end of the line for so long that Lalli started to worry. When Onni finally responded, his voice wavered. "I'm sorry, I must have heard you wrong. You're _what?"_  
>  "Engaged." He couldn't help the cheery note in his voice. "To Emil Västerström. He--"  
> "The _godless Swedish Cleanser?!_ Have you--Lalli Hotakainen, you ought to be shipped home _right this minute,_ the Silent World has clearly driven you insane. You've only known him for two weeks! How could you..."  
>  There was more after that (they didn't speak the same language, Emil must be after something, he was going to break his heart, Onni hadn't even _met_ him, how did Lalli know it wasn't just a joke or some hormonal impulse, could he even _trust_ Emil) but Lalli tuned his cousin out. Emil looked at him like he was the most precious thing in the world. He was in good hands.


	2. two households, both alike in dignity

Onni was yelling into the radio in Finnish. _Still_. His voice was starting to go hoarse. And was he—Torbjörn winced. Yes, he was starting to cry, big fat tears that he had no hope of hiding even as he scrubbed at his face with the back of a hand. Tuuri sounded frantic on the other end. When she stopped talking, Onni took a deep breath and got to his feet, shoving the chair back.

Torbjörn swallowed hard at the icy rage on his face. “Um. Is…everyone okay?” _God, why did Taru have to leave now?_

Onni locked eyes with him. Torbjörn took a step back. “Why don’t you ask your nephew?”

He felt his stomach drop. “What happened?” _He’s dead. He’s dead or he got someone else killed and now the mission is a failure and we’re all doomed._

Onni took a slow breath. “Ask him.”

As he shouldered roughly past him, Torbjörn took his vacated seat at the radio and pressed his palms flat to the console, trying to calm himself down. As something thudded against the wall outside—probably Onni’s fist, he thought—he put the headset on. “Emil? Emil, are you there?”

Crackling static. Tuuri and a voice that was probably Lalli, snapping at each other in Finnish before Tuuri called Emil’s name. When Emil’s voice rang out—hesitant, nervous—Torbjörn could have cried with relief. “Uh. Yeah. I’m here.”

“Emil, what did you _do?_ Onni’s upset, Tuuri’s yelling…”

The sound of Emil taking a deep breath. “Um. Well. I…proposed.”

For a moment, the words refused to register in his mind. “You _what?!”_

“—To Lalli, and—it wasn’t planned! It just kind of happened! He…” Emil huffed, sounding defiant. “Look, I know it’s a shock, but Lalli said yes and I _like_ him—”

In the maelstrom of reasons why this was a bad idea—they were both only nineteen, neither of them spoke each other’s languages, they were virtual strangers—Torbjörn’s mind seized on one thing and before he could stop himself he was blurting it out. “You’ve only known him for two weeks! You can’t—”

“…Dear? What’s going on?”

Siv, leaning in the doorway. She looked drained from wrangling the children into bed, and Torbjörn winced at the necessity of breaking the news. “Well…um. Emil sort of…got himself…engaged. To Lalli Hotakainen, the night scout. Onni and Tuuri’s cousin.”

She stared blankly at him. “He did what.”

“Now, I know he made a big decision, but I’m sure it’ll all work out…”

“It will _not_. Is he insane? Has he lost his mind? This is horrible! What does he think he’s even doing, he barely even _knows_ him—”

He held out the other headset. “Do you want to talk to him?”

She huffed, sitting down forcefully enough to shift the chair under her. “Fine.” She wasted no time. “Emil. What’s this that your uncle and I are hearing?”

There was the sound of Emil swallowing. “Uncle Torbjörn just told you. I…I’m getting married to Lalli Hotakainen, since it seems he…doesn’t object.”

She gaped at the controls in front of her. “Why?” And then _“What did he do?”_ Her tone made Torbjörn wince; Lalli hadn’t said two words to him—didn’t even have that many words of any language save Finnish—but he probably didn’t deserve to be spoken of in the same tones Siv reserved for tax collectors and her in-laws.

Emil hesitated. “He…look, okay, I didn’t think magic was real. I thought ‘mage’ was one of those silly non-literal things people call people. But then today he actually _did_ some, he saved my life, and it was…it was _incredible_. I kind of blurted it out—and he said yes! And…I like him, magic or not, and he seems to like me back. As long as I’m making him happy, I’m…gonna go through with it. Okay?”

She hissed into the receiver. “No! Not okay, not okay at all! Yeah, you like him now, but that’s just hormones—you don’t know anything about him! How do you know you can even trust him? Have you even _thought_ about this?”

“Yes! I…look, just trust me. I know what I’m doing. And—and you don’t have to worry about me, either, because Lalli is…he’s _wonderful_. He’s tough and smart and a really great guy, and—” A faint gagging noise, and Emil’s voice rose to an offended squawk. “Sigrun!”

As the Norwegian captain responded—something about joking and how she found them just sickeningly cute—Siv turned to her husband with despair written all over her face. “What are we going to do? What _can_ we do? Emil’s going to ruin his life if he goes through with this, he’s only just met this kid.”

Torbjörn sighed, scratching at his beard. “Look, you know what Emil’s like. Once he gets an idea into his head, it never leaves. Maybe we should just go with it. Emil’s not alone out there; he’s got the rest of the team, and they’ll look out for him—”

“—We hope—”

He grimaced. “That’s all we can do.”

Distant voice, probably Tuuri. “…Are they still there?”

“I don’t know, let me—Aunt Siv? Uncle Torbjörn?”

He cleared his throat. “Yes, we’re here. So…what you’re saying is, you’re definitely going to go through with this engagement to Lalli Hotakainen. Even though you’ve barely met him, you’re both not even out of your teens yet, and you don’t have a single language in common. Oh, _and_ you’re both currently in the middle of the Silent World with trolls and giants and all kinds of horrible things around you. This is who you, right now, think you want to marry.”

Emil’s sigh sounded too loud in the headphones. “…So we’ll have a long engagement. There’s nothing wrong with that.”

“ _Emil_.” He felt pure desperation rising, threatening to choke him. “Just—please. Tell me. You’re _really_ sure?”

He sighed again, heavy. “I’m sure. We’ll make it work; we’ll find a way.”

Siv rubbed her temples, grimacing. “I still say you’re headed straight for a broken heart, at the very least. Just…be _careful_ , okay? Promise us you’ll be careful; don’t get too swept up in these…feelings. We want you back safe and sound, engaged or not.”

“…Okay.”

“Okay. Good night; we love you.” As she set the headset down, she followed it, slumping over with her head on the console. “I cannot— _fucking_ —believe this. Remember when we worried ourselves sick over him joining the Cleansers, and we thought _that_ was the most reckless thing he could do? God, were we wrong!”

Torbjörn laid a hand on her shoulder, rubbing a hopefully-soothing circle into the muscle there. “Emil’s got a good, soft heart, but he’s not stupid. If there’s anything good that can come out of this…relationship of his, he’ll find it. We just have to be there for him. Who knows? Maybe it’ll all be okay.”

“ _Maybe_.” After a sigh that seemed to come all the way up from her toes, she remarked, “Thorulf is going to have a stroke. You tell him.”

He winced. “…Fine.” _I’ll write him a letter. That will be the least painful way to do it._

\--

Of course, it was never that simple. The next day, Torbjörn sat down at his typewriter with a large glass of beer. He very rarely drank, but if he was going to write to his brother with news like this, he suspected he was going to need the fortification. Besides, it made a good paperweight for his copy of Lalli Hotakainen’s military files. For a long while, he simply stared at the blank page, trying to organize his thoughts; when he finally set his fingers to the keys, he didn’t hesitate.

_Dear Thorulf and Marta,_

_I have news for you that I know you’ve been longing to hear. Your son has just let it be known that he is engaged to be married…_

It was the hardest letter he’d ever written. It was unwise to gush too freely about any of Lalli’s perceived good points or Emil’s apparent budding feelings for the young man, or Thorulf would think he was wholeheartedly in favor of the whole thing. On the other hand, if he condemned the relationship too strongly, Thorulf would certainly want to know why he hadn’t forbade the match outright. _As if I’m supposed to be your son’s father, “brother dear,”_ he thought savagely as he sealed and stamped the envelope.

He felt a little better once he mailed it. His brother was stubborn and pigheaded, but he was capable of quick thinking when the occasion called for it; surely, he’d understand that there was no other reasonable course of action but to be as supportive as possible if—or when—it blew up in Emil’s face and they were left with the task of picking bits of the boy’s broken heart out of the metaphorical shrubbery. Surely he’d avail himself of his good sense once the shock wore off.

The response they received the next day proved him wrong.

Siv got to the mail first; as she sat down on the couch to read it, Torbjörn watched her expression cycle through concern and shock before settling on a sort of incredulous anger. “They’re _disowning_ him?!”

The world tilted around him; if he wasn’t leaning against the arm of the couch, he thought he might fall over. “That’s ridiculous—they can’t do that!”

She swallowed. “…It appears that…that’s exactly what they’re doing. Read the letter yourself, dear.”

He took the letter in suddenly-trembling hands. “No. Oh, _no_.” Indeed, Emil’s parents were not just disowning him; the letter went on in truly vituperative fashion over several pages to accuse Lalli of seducing him. He skimmed the page in growing horror, gaze flicking over choice phrases— _our foolish son—completely taken in by the wiles of foreign ‘mages,’—certainly the boy isn’t entirely sane—a disgrace to our family—he’ll never amount to anything now—throwing his life away on some little foreign tramp—how could you let this happen_. He’d never been ashamed of his family before, even with the unpleasantness that had lost them their fortunes, but this went far beyond an inability to balance a budget or stay away from the card tables; overcome, he squeezed his eyes shut.

Onni’s heavy footsteps announced his arrival long before the man himself came to loom in the doorway. “What’s going on?”

Torbjörn sucked in a breath, shaking with the sudden anger that raced through his veins as he switched to Icelandic. “We told Emil’s parents about…what happened. And they are _terrible parents_.”

“I knew this was going to happen.” Siv heaved a sigh, shaking her head. “Your brother always was a hidebound jerk; his son being engaged to a pagan mage must have sent him right over the edge.”

Onni looked from one Västerström to the other, expression taking on a note of confusion—Siv had done her lamenting in Swedish. “Torbjörn. What did they do?”

He balled the letter up and tossed it on the coffee table. “They disowned him. As far as they’re concerned, proposing to your cousin means that Emil is no longer their son.” Some truthful impulse made him add, “And they, um. Don’t approve of Lalli, either.”

Onni sat down heavily on the nearest chair, eyes narrowing into a glare focused on the crumpled paper. Torbjörn wondered if he could glare it into combustion. “… _Really_.”

Siv hugged her arms, staring at the coffee table “So…what do we do?”

“…Well.” He took a breath. “If Emil’s parents aren’t going to support him, we’ll just have to do it instead. He’s our family, no matter what.”

She sighed, raking her hair back from her face. “Yeah. There’s no way telling him about this will end well, though.”

He shrugged with an ease he didn’t really feel. “So we don’t tell him. There. There’s no reason to distract the poor boy on a mission like this, especially over something he’s clearly not willing to take back yet; if Thorulf hasn’t calmed down by the time they get back, we can figure out a way to break the news then.”

“He won’t have.”

Onni looked up. He was still glaring, but it no longer looked quite so murderous. “So, Emil’s really determined to go through with this?”

“...Yeah.” Truthfully, part of him felt a little bad for Onni; the man hadn’t had any reason to expect this either. What kind of person expected to hear from their cousin in the Silent World that he was not wounded or sick or dead, but had acquired a Swedish soldier for a fiancé? “Sorry about that; looks like our family’s tied together for now. If it helps…uh. He seems to really like Lalli, at least?”

“Hnn.” For a moment, Onni eyed him up and down. “…Well, it could probably be worse.”

(“Worse,” it turned out, showed up just after dinner, when Emil took over the radio to cheerfully and firmly inform them that he was starting to learn Finnish, just as Lalli was learning a few words of Swedish. Tuuri’s interjection that she was teaching them both _separately_ didn’t help much, though it did forestall Torbjörn’s worries about what kind of Finnish phrases Emil might be learning.)

(When their next radio call was interrupted by a crash, a sharp word in Finnish, and Tuuri demanding to know where Emil had learned words like that, Torbjörn started worrying all over again. Siv, of course, had never stopped.)


	3. understanding

Finnish, Emil decided, was not a language created by humans. It was a tongue sent fully-formed from the deepest, darkest pit of hell. There was no other explanation for the horrors he’d seen in the pages of the battered Finnish-Swedish phrasebook Mikkel had unearthed from a ruined basement.

“This is a sentence. This is an entire sentence’s worth of information. _Why is it one word_.”

Tuuri leaned her elbows on the dashboard and gazed at him coolly. “You know exactly why it’s one word—unless you skipped the chapter on basic grammar. You didn’t skip the chapter on basic grammar, did you?”

He flushed. It had been a scary chapter, full of noun cases and affixes and words that changed almost entirely based on what specific thing you were talking about; he hadn’t had the nerve to do more than skim it. “No, but—”

“You’re _engaged_ to _my precious cousin_. The least you can do is learn our language.”

The page in front of him was easier to focus on than the look on Tuuri’s face. “…Yeah.” _I did do that, didn’t I?_

It had been a week, and it still didn’t truly feel real. He, Emil Västerström, was engaged to be married to Lalli Hotakainen, Finnish mage and night scout. He was _engaged_. He was going to be a _married man_. He was, he thought, almost certainly going to fuck it up somehow.

…But if he _didn’t_ …

Oh, if he didn’t fuck this whole thing up, then one day (soon, please god) he was going to marry Lalli, who was beautiful and capable and had actually kissed him on the mouth in full view of the entire rest of the team that morning when he’d gotten in from scouting. Emil had thought he was going to die. Sigrun’s broad grin hadn’t helped, especially since it had barely faded from the smugly triumphant one she’d worn since she’d learned about his engagement. (That had been another horrible shock; she and Mikkel had been betting for a month on whether he and Lalli would get together, and Emil had been so sure that he’d been _discreet_. _)_

“Great!” Tuuri’s smile held no sympathy. “Get studying.”

 _I could be practicing this with Lalli._ He couldn’t, though, and he felt his face heat as he remembered Tuuri’s very firm lecture as to why that would defeat the purpose of either of them actually learning either language. _Honestly, like she thinks I’m some kind of threat to Lalli’s virtue or something…_

Sighing heavily, he bent his head to the page again. _It sounds like it’s spelled, she says. It’s not hard once you get the structure down, she says. This language is horrible_. “How can it sound so nice when Lalli speaks it and so horrible when I try?”

It was only when Tuuri spoke that he realized he’d actually muttered that out loud. “Because _you’ve_ just started. You’ll get the hang of it.”

“Hrmph.” There wasn’t anything he could say to that, really; true, the urge to bemoan his fate was very, very strong, but he was a Västerström. He wasn’t going to back down, and he certainly wasn’t going to break his word—no matter how much his aunt and uncle worried over him. So what if he didn’t know much about Lalli? He would learn, and he’d be glad for the knowledge. So what if they were both young? There was nothing saying they needed to get married the day they returned to the Known World. There would be plenty of time to plan everything properly once they got back; they could decide their futures then.

If, that was, he ever managed to force enough Finnish into his head to hold a decent conversation. He lost track of how long he sat there, staring at the ragged pages in front of him. When he ventured to try saying some of the phrases out loud—basic things geared towards travelers (of which there had apparently been a lot in the Old World)—Tuuri hovered by his shoulder and very patiently corrected him until a thump from outside heralded Mikkel and Sigrun’s arrival, and he had to vacate his seat in the front of the tank so that Tuuri had space to coo over the new books.

There was nowhere else for him to sit but on his bunk. He brought the phrasebook with him, turning pages without really seeing them. It was hard for him to focus when sharing a space with Lalli.

His—boyfriend? fiancé? could you really, truly be engaged to someone without passing by the preliminary dating phase first?—was wedged under the other bunk, fast asleep, with Kitty curled up around his head like a furry hat. It was something that probably would have annoyed him if he’d been awake—for some reason Emil couldn’t fathom, he didn’t get along with the little cat—but in sleep, he looked relaxed. Gentle. Sleep smoothed his harsh edges, made him look softer.

It made Emil want to reach out and pet him, and his hand hovered in the air before he realized what he was doing—sure, he’d done it before, but it was _different_ now. The entire situation had changed with his foolish outburst. Face hot despite the cold air seeping in from the open door, he dropped his arm to his side. _I shouldn’t get my hopes up. Any minute now, he’s going to wake up and change his mind and decide he doesn’t want to be with me after all._

He sighed quietly, watching the way Lalli’s hair flopped into his face when he shifted. The nasty little whisper of doubt in his mind continued, coiling like smoke. Maybe Siv had been right; they weren’t going to work out. Yes, Lalli kissed him now, curled up next to him sometimes when they sat together, held his hand with that smug little smile of his that always made Emil’s heart race, but they couldn’t even speak to each other except through Tuuri. _What if he doesn’t want to? How can I make him happy if we can’t even talk? Would that even make him happy, or would I just be annoying him if he actually understood what I was saying? He doesn’t seem bothered by it now, but..._

“Mrrrr…”

Oh, Lalli was frowning in his sleep, making that steady grumbling noise that had always reminded him of a disgruntled cat. Before he could think about it, he was stroking Lalli’s forehead, feeling him relax and lean into the contact.

 _Maybe_ , he thought, _we might make this work._

“Hey, little Viking! Stop ogling your fiancé and give us a hand with these!”

Emil pulled back, glaring in the direction of Sigrun’s voice. “I’m coming!...and keep your voice down, my _fiancé_ is sleeping.”

There were plenty of things regarding his current situation that were completely humiliating, but damned if he was going to be embarrassed about _that_.

\--

By the time Lalli awoke, it was time for dinner. Well—everyone else’s dinner, and his breakfast. By the stench, it was stew again, and he grimaced. Mikkel’s stew was probably the worst thing he’d ever tasted, and that included the time he’d eaten a mouthful of plain porridge by mistake. Even the occasional addition of carrots or tuna, stretched thin to conserve precious flavorings, didn’t help much. But if he was going to scout effectively, he had to force it down. Sighing, he rolled over and wriggled out from under the bunk, hissing back at the cat when she complained about the loss of her warm, comfy bed.

At least mealtimes offered a chance to be with Emil, to spend some time with the young man who was his fiancé. It still felt weird; Emil was kind and handsome and incredibly endearing in a sort of earnest, puppylike fashion, but they’d only just met, and they still hadn’t managed to actually talk directly to each other in any meaningful way. Emil’s Finnish was completely atrocious, and his own Swedish was…well. Lalli at least _thought_ he could string together some words if he had a few moments’ time to prepare himself. Tuuri would accept nothing less.

As he pulled his boots on, he thought grumpily of those Swedish lessons. Swedish was _hard_ , and he and Emil clearly didn’t need words to communicate everything. Some truly excellent kisses had proved that, at least—but when he’d grumbled about it to Tuuri, she’d been ruthless.

 _“If you don’t apply yourself to learning Swedish, what am I supposed to tell Onni when he asks how you two are getting to know each other? Should I tell him, ‘no, they haven’t learned each other’s languages because they’re too busy shoving their tongues down each other’s throats’? ‘Oh, you don’t need to worry about how compatible their personalities are, because they sure are compatible in the bedroom’? I don’t think so—and you_ know _he’ll believe me.”_

They’d barely even kissed much yet (admittedly mostly because they were both often busy, usually tired, and there had been a shortage of privacy ever since the proposal), but he knew Tuuri was right; Onni would probably think Emil was seducing him, and then he’d (probably) yell and (definitely) cry, and then he, Lalli, would have to listen to it. _Ugh_. So he suffered through the Swedish lessons and reminded himself it was for Emil’s sake.

Emil, who was sitting on a rock in the dimming light with a bowl of soup, singlemindedly ignoring whatever probably-ridiculous story Sigrun was spinning as the team ate. For a long moment Lalli stood in the door of the tank and watched him, studying the way the firelight sank into his hair and made it gleam. Emil was beautiful, and something twisted hard in his chest at the realization that he was going to be his husband. _He wants to marry me. He looks at me the way he does, and he cares for me, and he likes me—might even love me. And I—_

It crashed into his mind like a thunderbolt. _I might well grow to love him back._

Terror glued his feet in place. He could stare down trolls, compose a runo out of thin air, hunt and track anything that moved, but there had never been anything in his training about this. _Gods, help me. What am I supposed to do?_

Silence.

He huffed quietly. Apparently, the gods didn’t feel like answering such short, lazy prayers; as understandable as it was, it also left him without options. Even if he felt like asking Sigrun or Mikkel—which was somewhat less appealing than the thought of leaping into a giant’s mouth—he didn’t have enough Swedish to do it. The annoying Icelander, Reynir, was a stranger. He certainly wasn’t going to bring it up to his family; Onni had cried when he told him of the engagement, and Tuuri only barely approved.

It would be easier, he thought, if it was just sex. He could handle sex; he’d done it enough back home to have a good, solid plan. Take the guy to his bunk, have one or two hopefully-satisfying orgasms, and politely suggest that it was late and they should leave; if they wanted to cuddle or—worse— _talk_ , a remark about how Onni would be coming to speak with him about something or other usually sent them scrambling for the nearest exit.

Emil was different. His smile sent a whole swarm of disturbed butterflies fluttering in Lalli’s stomach, and he had only had to see it once to know that he wanted to see it many more times. The thought of anything hurting him gave Lalli the urge to murder; the mere memory of what Onni had told him in the dreamscape still made his blood boil. _So his parents don’t want him anymore. So Onni only told me so I’d know what kind of family I’m marrying into. I don’t care; he’s wonderful, and he deserves even more of whatever I can give. But how do I make sure he knows that?_

He shook himself all over and padded out into the circle of firelight. Food would help. Almost immediately, Reynir was pressing a bowl into his hands with a gabble of Icelandic; he nodded and took a cautious sniff. Something with carrots—edible enough, but he made a mental note to do some hunting when he was in the field.

“Lalli?”

That was Emil, smiling tenderly as he shifted over and patted the flat rock next to him. Lalli eyed it; there was more than enough room for him to sit down and leave a respectable amount of personal space. They wouldn’t have to touch if he didn’t want to; Emil was sweet like that.

He wanted to. Slowly, carefully, he sat down and pressed himself against Emil’s side, close enough to feel his heartbeat. _Please_ , he thought. _Please understand this._

Emil was turning red in the flickering light, but a strong arm slid around Lalli’s waist to hold him tightly as they ate; when Sigrun turned away, he shifted to press a kiss to Lalli’s forehead. For him, this was bold, and Lalli couldn’t help but flush at the gesture.

“Awww!”

Oh, Sigrun had noticed, and was smirking and nudging Tuuri. Lalli leaned grumpily against Emil’s shoulder, and was surprised despite himself when Emil petted his side and pulled him closer, glaring at Sigrun in an unmistakably protective manner.

Apparently, Emil understood him well enough.

(Maybe, he thought, they wouldn’t need speech after all—but he decided to keep studying anyway. It would be nice to know if Emil’s sweetness extended to his words.)


	4. all i wanna do (is make love to you)

Really, Lalli was already the luckiest guy in the Silent World, and certainly the Known one as well. Emil was _gorgeous_ , and he got to look at him _all the time_. And once they got back, he would—with any luck—be able to continue looking at him for the rest of his life. He was too well-trained to let himself sigh fondly at the thought, but…it was a nice thought, anyway.

“Hm?”

Oh, Emil had turned back over his shoulder and noticed him staring. Lalli got an idea. Before he could reason himself out of it, he closed the distance between them, lowered his voice, sent a brief prayer of thanks that at least Swedish _pronunciation_ wasn’t that hard (grammar could go straight to Tuonela as far as he was concerned), and breathed softly into Emil’s ear, “Pretty.”

Emil went red and pressed a kiss to his cheek—the most he was ever willing to do in front of other people, especially if that person was Sigrun (who was walking ahead of them and hadn’t noticed _yet_ , but would probably grin that annoying grin of hers if she did).

The kiss warmed Lalli all the way down to his toes—it always did—but the vivid blush was…interesting. Granted, Emil turned red at the drop of a hat, but Lalli was starting to get the sense that compliments would get really fun reactions. Certain kinds of compliments, especially; Lalli cursed their language barrier for making it needlessly difficult to tell Emil _exactly_ what he thought of his looks, starting with that glorious shining hair and working his way down. From what he’d seen of it, his fiancé’s ass deserved a poem all by itself. Emil would probably blush until spring came.

Or kiss him again. Lalli kind of wanted more of those kisses, but they would have to wait. He contented himself with walking next to him in silence, experimentally bumping him with his hip midstride and getting— _yes_ —another blush.

Sigrun reached the tank ahead of them, calling out to Tuuri and Mikkel; they’d found a good cache of books earlier and Mikkel, to Lalli’s amusement, had been effectively maneuvered into the position of human packmule some days prior. He could easily carry all of the hardcovers they’d found in one trip.

Today, he wouldn’t be doing it alone; Tuuri was strapping her mask on. “Sigrun said there are some books with weird flexible covers; I don’t want Mikkel to rip them. I’m going to go help. I’ll be back later—keep an eye on Reynir!” Then there was Swedish, too fast for Lalli to make out.

Emil understood it, at least, because he blinked at her and said something in return as she left.

For the moment, they were alone in the tank. Lalli took a breath and set his rifle down against the wall, unzipping his coat; it was the first time they’d been alone and not on the job in days, and the sudden possibilities made him dizzy. There was absolutely nothing, no prying eyes or potential trolls or rampaging moose-beasts ( _that_ had been one hell of an afternoon) to stop him from pinning his fiancé up against the nearest wall and kissing him senseless—or doing even more, maybe, if Emil wanted to.

That felt like a fairly big “if.” Emil was glancing at him out of the corner of his eye, a faint flush spreading across his face, and Lalli felt uncharacteristically awkward. Situations like this were part of why he’d wanted to learn Swedish; it was one thing to hope, but it was an entirely different thing to be _sure_ that the person you wanted was just as into you as you were for them. And with Emil, he very much wanted to be sure. Maybe he’d get lucky, and one of those slim books they’d found would turn out to contain words he could use.

Emil set his gear down and took his hand, looking as though he desperately wanted to say something. “Ah…”

Lalli waited. Sometimes—rarely, but sometimes—Emil managed to blurt out a few words of Finnish if he gave him a moment to think.

Instead, he leaned forward and kissed him, sweetly but with a definite hunger to it that made Lalli purr as he deepened the kiss. He was expecting it when Emil dropped his hand, but the firm grip on his waist instead was a welcome surprise. He slid an encouraging hand into Emil’s hair, felt him almost growl as he pulled him closer, had barely thought _more_ before Emil was pulling away from his mouth to press shivery little kisses on his ear and jaw instead. It almost tickled, and he wished he could tell Emil that—

But then Emil was tugging his sweater aside to mouth at the side of his neck, and it sent sizzling shocks of pleasure through him. It felt only natural to tighten his grip on Emil’s hair, let his other hand press between his shoulderblades to mold their bodies together; when he felt the faint pressure of teeth, he dug his nails in before he could stop himself and was rewarded with a gasp and a probably involuntary roll of his hips that made him tremble even as he thought _ah, yes, Emil likes that._

Emil, apparently, liked it a lot. The hands at Lalli’s waist were working their way under his sweater, warm even through his gloves—but the gloves were rough in an unpleasant way, and Lalli wriggled irritably and jerked away.

Emil looked like he’d been burned; before he could do something stupid like bolt for the exit, Lalli grabbed his hands and tugged his gloves off. He took a moment to blink at him in confusion before reaching for him again, hesitantly, as though he wasn’t sure if he was allowed.

Lalli rolled his eyes and let his own hands fall to Emil’s hips, pulling him back in. Thankfully, this wasn’t a signal Emil could misjudge; he went willingly, dropping his mouth to Lalli’s throat again and actually growling when a sharp nip made him jolt. That felt entirely too good; Lalli opened his mouth to try telling him that, but there was a complete blank where his limited Swedish should have been because Emil wasn’t _stopping_ , teeth digging into vulnerable flesh so that all Lalli could manage in response was to grab at his ass (which definitely deserved a poem, Lalli resolved to get right on that as soon as he could think again) and arch, grinding against him.

“ _Lalli_.” There was more whispered Swedish, probably profane, but one of Emil’s hands had wound up cradling the base of his skull and the other was sliding between them to shove his sweater up, and the feeling of his fingers on bare skin was so delicious that Lalli didn’t care what he was saying as long as he kept touching him.

He didn’t disappoint; taking Lalli’s bared throat as an invitation, he nipped a trail down it that Lalli deeply hoped would leave marks the next day. Each little sting made him shudder and writhe, and he almost whimpered when Emil shifted to press his thigh between his legs at just the right angle to send sparks up his spine.

 _We are wearing too many clothes._ He didn’t want to let go of Emil’s ass, really, but the urge to run his hands over bare skin just the way Emil was doing to him was too strong; wriggling, he pulled away just far enough to work his hands between them and yank at Emil’s coat zipper.

Emil made a questioning noise and lifted his head; Lalli briefly mourned the loss of contact, but then Emil’s coat was open and he could push his shirt up, and _that_ made up for it. Emil’s muscles were just as firm as they looked, and he made a shaky noise when Lalli smoothed his hands over them. “Nnh…”

Lalli smirked at him. “Good?” It came out in Finnish—he would have to actually think to summon up any Swedish, and right now Emil’s hips working in a slow roll against his own was steadily eroding his ability to do that—but he knew Emil could recognize sounds even if he couldn’t pronounce them.

Emil took a breath as their eyes met. “ _Yes_.” It was the barest whisper, and Lalli was glad that he’d recognized the need for quiet; Reynir was right outside working on their dinner and if he interrupted them Lalli would have to kill him.

And then he moved, pinning him against the nearest wall; Lalli hadn’t been expecting that, but the surprised sound that escaped him melted into a moan as Emil pressed himself fully against him. The cold wall was a shock to his bare skin, and he keened and arched into Emil’s touch when a hand wound up skimming down his stomach. He stopped at his waistband, but Lalli almost didn’t care; Emil wasn’t at all shy about kissing him, and when his mouth found his collarbone he had to clench his jaw to muffle what he was sure would have been an embarrassingly loud groan.

A chair would help, Lalli thought dizzily. If Emil kept doing that, they’d probably wind up on the floor. “Nnh...” He caught Emil’s hands lightly, holding them still; before he could jump to the wrong conclusions, he jerked his head towards the driver’s compartment. There definitely wouldn’t be enough space on the bunks.

Emil sucked in a breath and nodded, pulling away reluctantly to cross the space to the driver’s chair. As he sat down in it, Lalli took a moment to just look at him—very visibly aroused, hair in disarray, shirt shoved halfway up his torso, eyes locked on his with an expression of pure hunger. He was irresistible.

When Lalli straddled him, he wasted no time pulling him down for a kiss. Lalli growled into it, shifting his weight and reveling in the way Emil arched under him. It felt only natural to bury his hands in Emil’s hair, tugging his head back so he could lavish attention on his throat the same way Emil had done for him; it was immensely gratifying to feel his fiancé shudder, hear the way he tried to bite back the sounds that wanted to make their way out.

Emil’s hands wound up at his ass, squeezing wickedly; when he muffled a groan in his shoulder, he didn’t need to look up to know Emil was probably smirking. In retaliation, he nipped sharply at the spot where his neck met his collarbone, and was rewarded by a shuddering gasp and a breathy whisper of something that was definitely profanity. Experimentally, he did it again, rolling his hips, and Emil moaned.

 _Victory_. He was achingly hard, could feel Emil in the same condition, and it was intoxicating; when he wriggled, the friction sizzled down his spine. He _wanted_ —and, judging by the way Emil tugged him close, so did he. Fleetingly he wondered if he could get off just from this, from the steady way Emil was rocking under him, but Emil was sliding his hands between them and it didn’t look as if he’d even have to find out—

“Lalli!”

_Well, fuck._

Apparently they hadn’t locked the door. As Emil blushed all the way down to his collarbones and started stammering what was probably an apology in Swedish, Lalli reluctantly pulled away. Irritation was working its way under his skin like a spiky worm, and he couldn’t manage to keep it out of his voice. “Tuuri, I am _engaged_.”

He didn’t have to turn around to sense her eyes narrowing. “Engaged. Not married.”

It was a low blow, he knew, but… “ _You’re_ not married, and that didn’t stop you from hooking up with that mechanic or the skald in your class or the brewer—”

“I—I didn’t hook up with them _on the chair where I have to sit to drive this tank_ , Lalli!”

Reluctantly, he did have to admit she had a point. “Mrr.” Right. This probably called for apology words. “…Sorry.”

As he took Emil’s hand and steered him into the bunks, he could feel her glaring at him.

\--

Later that night, Tuuri set up a radio call. She was dreading it, but she _had_ promised Onni that she would keep him up to date on every new development between their cousin and his new “fiancé.” And this was very definitely a development.

He answered as soon as she called his name. “What is it? Is everyone alright? Are _you_ alright?”

“We’re fine. Lalli’s getting pretty good at Swedish.” She took a breath. “…But, um. You know how we were telling him to take it slow and not get too attached?”

Onni swallowed. “…What did he do?”

She made a face, eying the chair she was standing next to. She’d disinfected it before daring to sit down, but still. “Well. I found him in Emil’s lap, making out, _on my chair_.”

By the sound of it, Onni was choking on his own spit. When he found his voice again, he sounded outraged. “They’ve been together for two weeks. Two weeks! That is _not_ taking it slowly. I’ll talk to him.”

She felt her gut twist. “Ah! Um, no, you don’t have to do that. I already did, it’s fine. He understands now—don’t worry.” Telling Onni not to worry was like telling the tides to stop, but it was worth a try anyway. Maybe, just this once, he would take it to heart.

“…How can I not worry?” The sigh echoed in her headset. “Our cousin is determined to tie himself to this kid, and he won’t take any of my advice. I warned him to be careful, and he brushed it off. Whatever his feelings towards Emil, he’s being reckless about it.”

She turned, looking out of the open door to where Lalli and Emil sat by the fire, Lalli’s head on Emil’s shoulder. It was hard to make out, but she thought Lalli was smiling. “I’ll keep an eye on them, okay? And I’ll keep you informed.”

“Hrmph.”

Trond’s voice blared in the speakers. “Hey, is Sigrun there?”

“I’ll get her!” Sighing, she went to go fetch their captain, sending a brief prayer to the gods for forgiveness.

(She’d rather chop off her writing hand than actually lecture Lalli about his love life, but it wasn’t lying if Onni never found out. Besides, they were clearly, desperately in love—or at least in lust, and she’d caught Lalli watching Emil like he was some rare and precious thing—so it would all work out.)

(It had to.)


	5. foreigner's god

They had been engaged for three weeks, two days, and four hours when Lalli got sick.

It had started with a stuffy nose; Lalli had spent a day aggressively clearing his throat before declaring himself to feel fine. The next day, he’d begun coughing, slight and half-muffled. Emil hadn’t been too worried at first; winter colds were things that happened, and Mikkel wasn’t running short on medical supplies yet. And Lalli was strong.

But then the fever had struck, and when he’d stood up and nearly buckled Tuuri had dragged him inside and refused to let him out until Mikkel checked him over. The prescription—more sleep and plenty of fluids—had not helped. The cough lingered, shifting down from his throat into the violent hack of someone half choking on the contents of his own lungs, and he had to sleep propped up on all the pillows they had. When the fever hovered high enough to burn Emil’s lips as he pressed them to his forehead to check, Reynir started scribbling runes on every convenient flat surface. Not even Mikkel complained.

Emil didn’t want to leave his side. To his surprise, Sigrun didn’t try to force him out into the field; with their scout out of commission, they couldn’t get much done anyway. The hours he didn’t spend trying to learn Finnish were filled with rifle drills and sparring practice—all things he was terrible at, but even stumbling over Finnish grammar and getting his ass handed to him was better than watching helplessly ( _again_ ) as Lalli tossed and turned and tried to sleep.

Still, when he was done, he went to sit by Lalli’s side, running a cool cloth over his forehead and wincing with every racking cough. And so he was the first one to hear when Lalli started to talk in his sleep.

“Uh. Tuuri?”

Tuuri stuck her head in from the driver’s compartment. Her dismayed expression only lasted a split second before being replaced by a reassuring smile, but it seared itself into Emil’s gut anyway. “Oh. That’s…um. He’s rambling, but I’m sure he’ll snap out of it soon…” Her voice dropped to a hiss. “Mikkel, where is that thermometer?”

Mikkel sighed heavily, squeezing into the room with his bag of medical supplies. He’d started carrying it on him at all times. “Here, wake him up for me.”

Emil laid a hand on Lalli’s forehead. “Hey.” He couldn’t remember the Finnish for what he had to say; _damn_. Hopefully, just the sound of his voice would work. “Lalli, come on, Mikkel has to take your temperature.”

Lalli barely stirred. Unless Emil was mistaken, he’d just muttered something about crabs or possibly needing new shoes.

“Lalli, _please_.” He was not going to cry, not in front of all his friends. “Wake up!”

“…Just get his mouth open, I’ll hold the thermometer.”

It was terrifying how easy it was to do. Normally, Lalli objected to being manhandled; even the day before, he’d growled when Emil had asked if he wanted help. Now, he was limp and weak in his arms, barely even making a noise when Mikkel slipped the thermometer under his tongue.

The wait was torturous, but finally Mikkel pulled it free and frowned. “Ah.”

Dread latched its jaws onto him. “What does that mean?”

“It’s still high. All we can do is wait.”

He took a breath, feeling numb terror give way to cold anger that coiled through his veins like ice. Waiting _wasn’t good enough_. “Okay.”

Reynir was talking. Hesitantly, Tuuri translated. “Um. He says that Lalli was still awake in the dream world last time he checked—which is a good thing!”

Breathing helped. Breathing kept him from screaming. Lalli would barely wake, had to be forced to keep eating on the rare occasions he did, and all they could do was hover uselessly and wait for the fever to break. Each of his breaths was a hoarse rasp, and as Emil listened he heard his fiancé murmur something incoherent even by the standards of the Finnish language.

It was too much to bear; when Lalli coughed once, deeply, he roughly yanked his boots on and shot to his feet. “Tuuri? Quick question. Do you Finns have a god of—I don’t know, disease or anything?”

She blinked at him as he approached. “Well…Loviatar brings sickness, I guess she could take it away—she’s the mother of diseases—but you’re not a mage, you can’t—”

He took a moment, sounding the name out slowly and rolling the syllables around on his tongue. “Loviatar. Got it.”

“Kid, I don’t know if—”

His gaze snapped to Sigrun. “Lalli’s a Finnish mage. The Finnish gods had better listen.”

She shrugged, setting down the cloth she was using to clean her rifle. “Hey, I’m just saying you might not want to get your hopes up.”

He was already stomping out of the tank, ignoring the freezing air and the first flakes of snow starting to spiral down. So he wasn’t a mage; he didn’t _care_. Lalli was sick, and science clearly wasn’t helping fast enough. That left only one option, even if it was something he never would have thought of before he’d met him. But if Lalli was a mage, and magic and the gods were real, then wasn’t there some sort of unwritten contract? The gods had to owe _something_ in return for Lalli’s service. _I don’t know any songs or prayers or anything, but…_

He cleared his throat and glared up at the sky. “Gods of Finland! Yeah, you, pay attention down here! One of _your_ mages is sick; he’s loyal to you, he does all the right rituals and everything, so you fucking owe him! And— _and_ , he’s a good man and I’m going to marry him, so you had fucking better tell Loviatar to fuck off with her horrible disease children, or I’m going to get really angry! Do you hear me? _Do you hear me?_ Don’t make me come up there, or I _swear_ —you’ll wish you really didn’t exist when I’m through with you!”

There was silence.

Trembling, he took a deep breath and snarled, “Well? I’m waiting, you ungrateful bastards!” _Let them come down here. Let them come down here, and I’ll grab them by the neck and_ make _them heal Lalli, I swear._

The wind whistled through the grass. It was the only answer.

\--

Lalli was walking through his dream haven.

He’d lost track of how long he’d been moving, only dimly aware of the squelch of his wet boots on the ground and the breeze in the air. Trees wavered into view as he approached, only to dissolve as he passed them; though he knew this could be nothing good, he was too tired to be overly worried about it. Every part of his concentration was focused on remaining upright and mobile, because he knew, he _knew_ , that if he stopped walking…

He’d been sick. He remembered that. The hacking cough was the most painful part, but here in the dreamscape he could breathe easily. Nothing could touch him here in his haven. If he stayed here, he could rest.

But if he stayed here, he had to stay awake. Bad things happened to mages sick enough to fall asleep in their dreams. His grandma had told him stories about that; later, when he was older, Onni had given him the expanded versions. And so, though his limbs felt like lead, he pressed on. The wide, slow-moving stream in his path was no obstacle, not with smooth, flat stones to jump across.

As his foot landed, the rock vanished and he fell into the river with a gasp. He caught himself on his hands and knees, nose brushing the water. This was _bad_. Nothing was more firmly established than a decent mage’s haven; they were little islands of stability in the shifting sea of dreams. If it was starting to fall apart, he was sicker than he thought. But he’d only had a cold, hadn’t he?

No. There had been a reason he was here, and now that he thought about it, he could remember what it was. He remembered collapsing, feeling as though he would freeze to death one moment and burn alive the next, the disgusting clamminess of his skin, the way he’d clung to Emil’s coat like a lifeline.

 _Fever. It could kill me if it keeps me from waking up. And I…_ He started to shake, tremors rocking down to his bones. If he died, Emil would be alone, and the mission would be a total failure, and he couldn’t let either of those things happen.

He straightened up, wiped his muddy hands on his tunic, and pinched himself hard. Nothing happened.

Sudden panic galvanized him, and he set off at a run. Out of the water, through the trees, splashing through the bog that he’d never gotten around to erasing; he didn’t care where he went, only that he had to somehow get out of the dreamscape entirely before it was too late. As he landed on the planks of his raft, his luonto sprang into being beside him, heavy paws keeping pace.

His lungs burned; he sucked in a deep breath. _I’m not going to die. I refuse. Do you hear me, Tuonetar? I refuse to die like this._

There was a sound, distant. He stopped.

It wasn’t a dreaming sound, produced by that odd alteration of normal hearing that came through your mind and bypassed your ears entirely. In the waking world, someone was calling his name, and it was a voice he knew—and knew, suddenly and shatteringly, that he loved.

 _Emil_.

The dreamscape trembled and wavered; a few trees cracked, splintering into chunks that simply vanished as they fell. He couldn’t feel his fingers or toes anymore, knew without looking that they’d begun to dissolve. He took a slow breath; the air that filled his lungs seemed to fill his whole body, rendering him weightless. For what felt like an eternity, he drifted on the hazy sea between sleep and waking.

“…li? Lalli?”

He opened his eyes and stared into Emil’s face. His fiancé looked exhausted, bags under his eyes and his usually spotless hair in disarray—but he was starting to smile, slow as a sunrise. “You’re awake!”

His mouth was too dry; he tried to talk, but all that came out was a disgustingly weak croak. Emil held a cup of water to his lips, and he drank greedily until he could manage words. “Hi.” _I’m better now_ , he wanted to say. _You can stop worrying._ But that would take effort, and he wasn’t sure he could spare any right now.

Emil seemed to be at a loss for words. “I…”

Slowly, he smiled at him. This time, he made sure to rearrange his mouth into the right shape, to make sure Emil understood it.

Oh. Emil was hugging him, arms tight around his waist and face buried in his shoulder. His voice was muffled, but Lalli could still understand his shaky words. “Thank the _gods_ —all of them.”

His joints protested, but nevertheless his own arms came up to press into Emil’s shoulder. “Mmh. I…” Swedish. Right. He could remember the Swedish words, if he thought about it. “I thought you did not believe.”

Sigrun snorted from somewhere on his left, saying something that after a moment he was able to mentally translate into “Didn’t stop him from yelling at them.”

He lifted his head, staring at her. He _had_ to have heard that wrong. “What.”

Emil huffed, giving him a squeeze. “I was _worried_.”

There was a series of thumps from the driver’s compartment before Tuuri burst through the door. “Oh, Lalli!” To Emil, almost absently, she added, “Move so I can hug my cousin.”

As he reluctantly pulled away, settling back on his haunches on the floor, Lalli sighed and submitted himself to Tuuri’s crushing hug. She’d never learned to hug _gently_ , something that Emil seemed to do instinctively; he could only tolerate it for a second before wriggling away and asking, “Did Emil really yell at the gods?”

She sighed, rolling her eyes. “ _Yes_. You had a pretty high fever; Mikkel told us all we could do was wait until it broke, but Emil thought it wasn’t good enough. So he went outside and…well. Yelled at the gods to make you better.”

He blinked at Emil, who looked like he was trying desperately to pick out any words he recognized in Tuuri’s Finnish. Partly, he thought he should be more surprised, but…it _was_ Emil. Still, the realization that Emil was willing to even antagonize the gods to help him was something that sent a charge through him. “ _Oh_.”

Reynir was saying something outside. Tuuri lifted her head. “Oh, that’s dinner—do you think you can manage any?”

He thought for a moment. “…I’m not sure. Maybe.”

“…I’ll bring you some.” Sigrun was already up and out the door; Tuuri hurried to follow her. For the moment, he and Emil were alone.

Emil wasted no time settling on the edge of the bunk and pulling him close again, pressing his lips to his forehead. “How do you feel?”

He breathed in and out, pausing at the point where the coughing usually started and sighing when there was none. “…Better. Much. I cannot _believe_ you did that.” He could almost hear Onni grumbling about crazy Swedes and their irreverence for the gods, but he couldn’t bring himself to care.

Emil shifted so that they were almost nose-to-nose, gazing steadily into his eyes. “Lalli. I am going to _marry_ you. No god or—or _anything_ is going to come between us. I promise you.”

He swallowed hard. His heart seemed to have lodged itself in his throat; words couldn’t make their way out. “I—I _love_ you.”

In the split-second of stunned silence that followed, he had just enough time to think, very clearly, _Fuck_.

But then Emil was closing the distance between them and kissing him, completely heedless of the state of his breath, and as he sighed and melted into it he thought he’d probably said something right. It was a supposition that was borne out a moment later when Emil pulled away just enough to breathe “Love you too, _so_ much” before going in for another one.

(They might have missed dinner if Lalli’s stomach hadn’t growled loudly enough to startle both of them. He privately thought it might have been worth it; it was carrot soup _again_. At least Mikkel gave him a clean bill of health and announced he could resume his duties, so that was good. And no horrible curses seemed about to fall on them, which was also good.)

(Just in case, he tried to step very carefully when he went back in the field.)


	6. divine diplomacy

The day after Lalli’s fever broke, things started going wrong. Nothing major—nothing that would normally worry him—but small things. A broken tool here, missing socks there, a strange and undefinable smell from the tank’s toilet that took Tuuri a full afternoon to fix. The sky boiled with dark clouds, rumbling with distant thunder that refused to resolve into rain, and Reynir’s hair was even poofier and more in the way than ever.

When, after a week of minor problems, Emil’s flamethrower completely refused to turn on no matter what he did—and thank the gods that he’d discovered the problem while maintaining it, not in the middle of combat!—Lalli realized that something was definitely interfering.

“Emil.”

He looked up from his flamethrower, face still scrunched in irritation. “What?”

Lalli paused to gather his words. “What…did you say? To the gods? Exact.”

He’d never actually seen the blood drain from Emil’s face before. “Uh.”

Oh, this was probably bad. Lalli took a slow breath, staring him down. Whatever he’d said, it was clear the gods had taken offense.

Emil stammered and blushed, fixing his gaze at a point somewhere far to Lalli’s left, but he told him. Every word left his mouth like it was being dragged out, and when he was finished he added defiantly, “You were _really_ sick, and I was scared, okay?”

Lalli barely resisted the urge to drop his head into his hands. _I love him. I love him but gods, he is an idiot._ It took a moment for him to summon up the right Swedish words; the urge to snap at him in Finnish was strong, but there was no point in scolding someone in a language they didn’t understand. “You do not think the gods might be _angry_?”

“…Um.” No, clearly he had not. “There were more important things!” He hesitated. “…Does it _matter_ that they’re angry?”

He silently counted to ten. Losing his temper at his fiancé—who he reminded himself he did love, even when the man had the common sense of a stone—would help no one; besides, Emil hadn’t even grown up following his local _Nordic_ gods, he definitely wasn’t to know that the Finnish ones were proud and demanded that proper respect be shown at all times. And he’d risked their anger to help him, even if Lalli still wasn’t sure if it had worked. “Yes. It does. Is why…all _this_.” Lacking the words, he gestured in a way that hopefully encompassed everything around them.

Emil caught his bottom lip between his teeth for a moment, staring at his boots. “ _Shit_. I’m sorry.” And then he glanced up, looking almost hopeful. “Okay, what do I do?”

Something in Lalli’s heart came dangerously close to melting. Yes, Emil could be absolutely ridiculous, but there was something endearing about his desire to fix what he’d inadvertently ruined even if he had no idea how to do it. _I swear that if he burned down a forest by accident, he’d panic and start planting trees._ “You do not. I will fix it.”

“Are you sure? I mean, if they’re really mad…”

He sighed and nodded; Emil would be worse than useless when it came to apologizing to the gods. For a moment, he thought about asking for Onni’s advice in the dreamscape—surely _he_ would know the proper rituals for this—but the thought of having to deal with Onni’s reaction when he found out why they were necessary made him want to bury himself under something much heavier and stronger than a few coats. A reinforced steel bunker, maybe. _He’d probably yell. Or cry. He’d definitely lecture me again on how being with Emil is a terrible idea, that he’s bound to be a bad influence on me if he doesn’t even pay proper respect to the gods. Ew._

“…I _am_ sorry.”

Oh, gods help him. Emil looked _sad_. Lalli reached over and carded his fingers through his hair, briefly wishing he wasn’t wearing gloves when Emil tilted his head into the touch. He thought about speaking, but decided against it for now; they didn’t need words at times like this. Emil understood him even without them.

And then he pulled away and strode off into the trees. If the gods decided to take further offense at his words, at least the rest of the team wouldn’t be caught in it immediately.

It was quiet in the trees. Safe—at least for now. Heart pounding much harder than he was comfortable with, he stood in utter silence against a half-dead birch tree and thought hard. It would have to be a really good runo, addressed to the proper gods.

Thunder boomed in the distance. He took a deep breath.

“Honored Ukko, father of lightning, hear the plea of your devoted, one who wanders away from your woods. Turn your rage from lover’s folly. Forgive the fury of words unthinking, understand he did not mean them, know that he will not repeat them.”

There was silence. He frowned. Onni had never told him what to do if the gods refused to answer. Hesitantly, he tried again. “Honor to you will be given—”

The crash of thunder over his head nearly deafened him. Even as he clapped his hands over his ringing ears to try to block out some of the pain, some instinct urged him to look up through the bare branches.

The clouds were melting away.

\--

Sigrun’s rifle was clean, her shortsword was strapped to her hip, and the ominous clouds that had been blanketing the sky were finally clearing. It would be an excellent day to scramble through the brush and check out the ruined houses a few hundred yards east of where they’d stopped the tank—but first came the task of gathering her brave warriors.

Accordingly, she poked her head out of the tank. Good; Emil was right there with his flamethrower and his rifle. “Hey, you ready?”

He stared into the trees for a moment before testing the controls on his flamethrower; as the pilot light blinked, he nodded. “Mrr.” She wondered if he knew he was picking up some of Lalli’s mannerisms. Which reminded her…

“Hey, where’s Twiggy?”

“…Talking to his gods.”

Something in his tone set alarm bells ringing in Sigrun’s head. She hadn’t lived to the ripe old age of thirty-two by ignoring them, so she hopped down next to him and nudged him companionably with her elbow, not even hard enough to leave a mark. “Any idea what about? You know, since you two are practically joined at the hip—and all the other places.”

Normally, the teasing would have made Emil turn adorably crimson. This time, his shoulders hunched as he drew in on himself. “I fucked up and he’s apologizing to them for my behavior, okay?”

She blinked slowly. “Huh?”

He huffed, face settling into a pout better suited to someone ten years younger. “Never mind.”

The internal klaxons screeched, jump-starting the short-term memory she usually didn’t pay much attention to outside of utilitarian things. “Wait, is this from when Lalli was sick and you went and cursed them out so he’d get better? I didn’t think that worked.”

He glared at his boots as though they owed him money. “It probably didn’t. But I pissed them off a lot, and Lalli thinks that’s why we’ve been having such bad luck lately, with stuff breaking and getting lost and everything. So he’s gone off that way to talk to them; I don’t know how he knows when they’re gonna be in a better mood or not, but I hope it’s soon.” He sighed heavily. “Or I just cursed us all.”

She considered that, letting his words rattle around in her mind for a few long seconds. “Wow, his gods sound like dicks.”

His head snapped up; he was blinking at her like a stunned fish, clearly baffled for some reason. “Um?”

She grinned at him. Really, he was ridiculous if he’d expected her to say anything else; the Finnish gods clearly _were_ assholes, if they would get mad over a little thing like that. They should be used to fielding complaints by now. “You should try praying to the Norse ones instead, they’re way more fun! I bet Tyr and Thor would love the way you do things.”

He stared flatly at her, eyebrows starting to knit together in what she was pretty sure was skeptical confusion. “…Who?”

 _Oookay, time to dial back my expectations here._ Emil was worse off than she’d thought—not that she’d had high hopes to begin with, but _damn_. “You don’t even know anything about the Norse gods? Nothing at all?”

His expression barely budged. “Sigrun. _Swedish_.”

“…Wow, they called you guys godless and I thought they were _kidding_.” Though she hated to admit it, even to herself, it was sort of a nasty shock. The Cleansers she’d worked with back home had been…well, _quiet_ about anything relating to the gods, but she’d always kind of assumed that they at least knew the basics of who to praise and/or blame.

He turned his face away, smoothing a hand over hair that was already immaculate. “We don’t—we didn’t _need_ gods.”

His words jogged something in her memory. Now that she thought about it, she did remember some of the Cleansers saying things like that—something about human ingenuity putting them on equal footing. Her grandmother had kicked a few asses over it and they’d shut up; at the time, she’d found it hilarious. Now, she shrugged. “Sounds like you need some now.”

“Oh, rub it in, why don’t you.”

That was sarcasm, so Sigrun ignored it. “Seriously, though. I think the Norse gods might like you better. Tyr’s a war god, so he probably expects people yelling at him.”

He lifted his head and eyed her warily. “Okay. If… _hypothetically_ …I was going to yell at the Norse gods, what makes you think they’d respond with actual help instead of—I don’t know, lightning bolts or something? I _am_ a ‘godless Swede,’ after all.”

She managed to wrestle down her inclination to grin until it came out as a smile. He’d probably flounce off if he thought she was making fun of him. “Trust me! I’ve yelled at the gods plenty of times, and not a single lightning bolt. They appreciate strength and determination, and you’ve got that in spades.”

“Hrm.” He didn’t look like he believed her.

“Here, I’ll prove it.” She called out to the sky, “Hey, Odinn! If I don’t see a place set for me in Valhalla when I die, I’m gonna come in there and start shoving gods around until I make one!”

Emil winced. “Ah…”

Aside from Mikkel grumbling something from inside the tank about “crazy Norwegians,” nothing happened. She turned back to Emil triumphantly. “See?”

“…Huh.” He didn’t seem to be paying attention to her anymore; curious, she followed his line of sight.

Oh, that explained it. Lalli was walking silently out of the trees; notably, he didn’t appear to be bleeding, limping, or glowing, which she took as an excellent sign.

Grinning, she leapt to her feet. “Hey, twigs! Everything go good with the praying and shit?”

His confused face as he—presumably—mentally translated what she’d said was adorable. “…Yes?”

“Great! Come on, we’re on a mission.”

And if the boys happened to be holding hands as they followed her into the shrubbery—well, that was just fine.

\--

For a while, they walked quietly. Lalli had slipped his hand into Emil’s as soon as they set off, and the warmth seemed to radiate through him even through their gloves. Emil didn’t want to be the first one to break the silence, but the question nagging at his brain demanded to be answered. Lalli probably wouldn’t be looking so calm if the gods had ignored him, right? Surely he’d be at least a little worried, and he wasn’t, so it had to have worked. _What could I even do if it didn’t? Nothing, that’s what. I doubt he’d appreciate me screwing everything up again. But…I have to know._

“…Did it, um. Did it work?”

Lalli glanced at him out of the corner of his eye. After a moment, he nodded.

The world seemed to be a little brighter, and not just because they’d passed through a brief break in the trees. “Oh, thank _god_.” He hesitated. “Um. The gods. I…guess.”

Lalli almost smiled.

Some basic sense of appropriate behavior kicked him in the brain a moment later, as they climbed over a fallen log. “And—thank you, too. For saying sorry to them for me.”

Soft lips pressed against his cheek. The day suddenly wasn’t quite as cold as it had been.

(Maybe he would try to pray to the gods tonight, he decided. It couldn’t hurt. Much.)

(…On second thought, maybe he’d get Tuuri and Sigrun to tell him stuff about their respective deities first. With his luck, he’d wind up praying to a god of death and bringing down some kind of horrible plague, or finding out that at least one pantheon had a fire god whose favorite tribute was old books.)


	7. at least it's better than socks

“Hey,” Tuuri remarked, “Tomorrow is Yule.”

Since Emil, Lalli, and Sigrun had just gotten in from their latest mission, all three groaned at her. There had been combat for once, and after five minutes of sheer terror Emil had wound up with three long, shallow parallel slices down his ribs. They wouldn’t need stitches, but they did need bandaging, and it would have been cold in the tank even if he hadn’t just stepped out of a decontamination bath with still-damp hair. It didn’t _feel_ like Yule.

“Happy Yule,” Mikkel grumbled. The rest of his words were indistinct, but after a moment Emil managed to mentally translate them into what he was pretty sure was, “As you can see, I brought you books and bandages.”

“Hrmph. We should do something, don’t you think?”

“No.” That was Sigrun, having her own leg wrapped. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, it’d be great! But there’s nothing we _can_ do out here, unless we wanna go out hunting again—and it’s too late for that today, we haven’t seen any tracks nearby.”

Tuuri shrugged. “Well, at least now we know.”

Right on cue, the radio crackled to life. “Hello? Is anyone there?”

“Aunt Siv!”

“Oh, good, you’re still alive—”

_“Happy Yule, Cousin Emil!”_

Emil winced; judging by the volume, all three of his cousins had yelled into the receiver at once. Lalli had clapped his hands over his ears in pain; without a second thought, he swept his coat off the back of his chair and draped it over his fiancé’s head. As Lalli burrowed into it, eyes squeezing shut as if that would help, Emil called back, “Happy Yule, kids! Have you been good?”

There was a chorus of yeses before Torbjörn’s voice cut in. “Happy Yule, everyone. I know we just talked the other day, but I thought we should mark the holiday! Even though—hah, obviously the presents will have to wait until you all get back, but we’ll definitely be able to afford some! What’s the state of our haul so far?”

Tuuri and Mikkel both started to talk at the same time, and there was a brief moment of confusion and a few poisonous glares before Tuuri won out, chattering away about all the books they found and how they’d be such a great help for understanding how the Silent World had functioned before the Rash. When she started digging around for a list—still talking—Emil tuned her out. He had more important things to think about than the stacks of old books moldering away in the storage compartment.

Like the fact that it was Yule, and he was pretty sure he was supposed to have gotten Lalli a gift. That was what you did for a guy you were going to marry, right?

Such social rules had been founded on the idea that you actually had something to _get_ , though. Lalli didn’t seem to want anything—well, apart from him, and they’d gotten good enough at snatching time together behind rocks and against trees and sometimes even in the tank that their intimacy was a fairly regular thing. Still new and incredible, yes, every time, but not a thing you could make special out here in the woods; at bare minimum, you’d need a real bed. _God, I wish we were back in civilization. I could go shopping, buy him anything his heart desired, treat him like the prince he is._

Lalli slumped over on his own seat, letting Emil’s coat flop over both of them as he leaned heavily against his uninjured side and hooked his chin onto his shoulder. His hair tickled his face, and Emil couldn’t help but smile. “Love you.” He kept his voice as quiet as he could; Tuuri was still talking to his aunt and uncle, drowning him out, but it was much nicer when he was sure nobody could hear him.

Lalli purred, rubbing his cheek against Emil’s like the giant cat he’d been told his luonto was. Emil’s heart melted, even though he could _feel_ Sigrun rolling her eyes at him.

The boring book-related conversation seemed to be ending; Trond was relaying holiday well-wishes to Sigrun from what seemed to be a terrifyingly endless array of Eide and Andersen family members. His passing mention of “the Madsen swarm” sending their regards made Emil shudder; the last thing the Known World needed was more Mikkels.

With one last burst—Finnish from Onni, _probably_ “Happy Yule” though Emil would lay even odds on it including something about wrapping up warm and not leaving the tank if they could help it—the radio fell silent.

Mikkel sighed heavily, running a hand through his hair. “Well, that’s settled. Who wants food?” A burst of Icelandic and a gesture at Reynir, who got up and scrambled into their tiny pantry to dig out leftover soup and the venison jerky he and Lalli had made (and that Sigrun had announced made him much too good to feed to trolls; Emil hoped Tuuri or Mikkel had explained to him that this was Sigrun’s idea of a joke).

As they ate, he wondered briefly why his parents hadn’t radioed in. True, they didn’t speak much normally—relations had always been a little strained after he’d joined the Cleansers—but he thought they could have managed it for a special occasion, especially since he was their only son. And he was going to be married; surely that counted for something?

Lalli was pulling his coat on again, nodding in return to Tuuri’s question. Right; he was still scouting, Yule or not. As he passed, he patted Emil’s hair and flashed him a smile.

Emil grinned back at him, knowing he probably looked sappy and not caring at all. Thoughts of his parents flitted across his mind again—really, it was _Yule_ —but he forcibly dismissed it as the night’s entertainment started. Tuuri had taken to telling stories to keep them from all dying of boredom during the growing winter nights when nobody could even think about sleeping yet, and he’d discovered he kind of liked the ones about hard-hearted Hannu and faithful Ville.

\--

Lalli ran through the night.

It had snowed yesterday, and the air was so cold it crackled. In this weather, the slightest breeze grew edges like knives; he pulled his hood tighter around his face and kept moving, letting exertion do the job of keeping him warm. If he ran fast enough, he wouldn’t notice the cold until he stopped—and he had no intention of stopping, not yet. He had _work_ to do. Tomorrow they would be moving again, starting the journey back up to the coast, and he had to make sure their proposed route through the woods was clear.

Besides, he thought better when he was moving; thoughts could flicker through his brain unimpeded as his eyes took in the spaces between trees, the pattern of twigs, the consistency of the ground under the snow. _It’s Yule. You give people gifts for that, don’t you?_ Well, you did if you were in Keuruu, with its two shops and extensive barter system, but here in the Silent World the options were limited. Emil probably wouldn’t be impressed with his usual standbys, anyway. _Happy Yule, I brought you back an entire deer, have fun. No, that’s stupid—besides, he goes all green when he has to help butcher anything. I can’t get him a flamethrower; I can’t get him anything he doesn’t already have._ After a moment’s thought, he amended that to “at least not in this weather.” There wasn’t enough room in the tank and Emil objected to anything that involved opening clothing when there was snow on the ground.

There was usually snow on the ground. It was almost enough to make Lalli wish for summer. _Even better, summer at home. But the bunk in Keuruu wouldn’t be much of a marriage bed if we go back there; maybe we should live in Mora instead…_

He crept over a boulder and down into a hollow, moving as silently as possible. The single-story brick building nestled into the landscape didn’t look like a potential troll nest—half the ceiling had long since fallen in, and it was partly dusted with snow—but it was better to be safe than sorry. Something cracked as he approached, and he froze until he realized it was only a roof beam giving way.

When nothing moved within the building, he dared to poke his head in. There had once been a table and chairs there, now broken along with the remains of an overstuffed couch. Rocks lined the shelves and cabinets along what was left of the walls, sparkling through thin layers of ice, and Lalli frowned. What kind of person collected rocks? They were nice to look at sometimes, but you couldn’t do anything with them apart from maybe using them as blunt weapons.

They _did_ shine in the moonlight, though. And Emil liked shiny, fancy things.

He took a few steps into the room and looked around. In the darkness, it took him a moment to judge colors; size and shape would be a better way to choose. The enormous gray rock filled with purple crystals was right out, as were the spiky red and orange ones flanking it. A flat gray stone with the imprint of some long-dead animal’s foot was interesting, but it split and fractured when he picked it up.

The moonlight picked out something in a corner. He slowly approached it, bending down for a closer look. The snow had failed to touch what proved to be a black rock roughly the size of his palm, vaguely oval with a few rounded chips taken out of one end. Something about the shape of the chips jogged his memory, and he drew his knife.

Sparks flew off the rock when he struck it. After a moment, Lalli smiled.

\--

Lalli was late for breakfast. Emil tried very hard not to worry; he’d been late before, and he usually showed up with meat for that night’s dinner. Never mind that Sigrun hadn’t found any animal tracks worth following nearby—if anyone could go into the frozen, dormant wilderness for a night and come back with food for three days, it was Lalli. His fiancé was practically born for running under the moon, and he had gods and magic on his side.

So he wasn’t worrying. At all. Right.

“Where _is_ he?”

…Alright, maybe he was worrying a little.

Mikkel sighed at him. “He’s probably fine. Stop fretting—and stop moving around so much, you’ll pull on your cuts. You _do_ want them to heal, don’t you?”

Grudgingly, he sat still. His wounds had stopped aching during the night, but they were itching horribly as they started to heal; worse, he couldn’t scratch them. At least thinking about his injuries (they were probably going to scar, he was going to come out of this with _scars_ ) and eating breakfast (carrot-y boiled oats again) was a decent distraction from the fact that it was Yule and he was without a single present to give to _anyone_.

Lalli probably wouldn’t mind; he was practical like that. But…still. It buzzed in the corner of his mind, a nasty little feeling of somehow being a terrible fiancé.

The faintest footsteps sounded from around the back of the tank before Lalli came into view. Heart lodged in his throat—where it always ended up when Lalli came back from scouting—Emil looked him over. No visible blood or injuries, and he wasn’t limping. _Thank all the gods._ “…Hey.”

Lalli smiled at him, looking tired but satisfied, and sank down next to him on a convenient rock. He didn’t seem to notice the cold, and Emil had a moment to wonder how he managed it before his brain short-circuited because Lalli was leaning in and stealing a kiss, brief but heated enough to make his head spin. When he pulled away, he murmured, “Happy Yule.”

The rock was just slightly too far away for Emil to wrap an arm around him without leaning over enough to pull on his new wounds, so he settled for running a hand over Lalli’s hair instead. “Happy Yule to you, too.”

Lalli rummaged around in his coat pocket before pulling out a rounded gray rock and holding it out. “…For you.”

Emil stared at it. “You got me…a rock.”

Lalli drew his knife, scraping it slowly against the stone. Sparks followed the steel.

Emil stared, feeling his face break out into a disbelieving grin as he took it from Lalli’s hand. “You got me the _best rock ever_.”

Wait, there was something scratched on the back of it. It was in Finnish, rows and rows of dense words that Emil couldn’t even begin to puzzle out. His Finnish just about extended to basic pleasantries, but he thought he recognized part of an invocation to Kuutar, the moon goddess. _A good-luck charm, maybe?_

Unfortunately, as he opened his mouth to ask Lalli what it meant, Mikkel grabbed him for decontamination. He sighed, closed his mouth, and resolved to ask Tuuri later.

\--

“Later” turned out to mean “an hour later,” once Lalli had been decontaminated and had a chance to tell Tuuri all about the road to the coast. As he picked at his breakfast, Emil took the chance to drop onto the bench in the driver’s compartment. “Hey, can you do me a favor?”

She lifted her head from the map. “Sure, what?”

He cleared his throat, feeling suddenly awkward. “Um. Well, Lalli gave me this rock and he scratched stuff on the back and you know my Finnish isn’t great but I’m trying really hard and—”

“You want me to translate?”

“…Yes please.”

Sighing, she took the rock and scanned the letters, head tilting as she read. Emil watched as her face slowly turned pink, eyes narrowing until she finally sighed and dropped her head onto the dashboard. “I can’t believe we’re related. I bet he was adopted.”

He swallowed hard. “What? What does it say?”

Tuuri lifted her head. She was red all the way to her ears, glaring past him out the open door to where Lalli was sitting. “Once you get past all the poetry? He’s asking for Kuutar to protect you…including your ass. And your sparkly hair.”

He felt his face heat up. “ _Oh_. I…that’s…nice to know.” As embarrassing as it was, he realized he meant it; it _was_ cool that Lalli had found him a rock that could strike sparks, and it wouldn’t have been Lalli if the accompanying runo had been entirely sappy.

Whatever she said after that was in Finnish, too fast for Emil to follow, but Lalli’s smug smirk in response needed no translation at all.

(Even in the Silent World, it looked like he was going to have a very good Yule indeed.)


	8. talk dirty to me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In English, at least, there are a whole range of "hide this [language]" books full of slang and filthy words. I decided there's no reason they couldn't exist in Swedish, too.

There had once been a town near the coast. It was in ruins now, of course, but not so run-down that some books hadn’t survived. Of course it got slightly moreso after they rolled in, but in Emil’s defense there had been a moose-beast lurking in one of the buildings, and the only possible reaction had involved fire and high explosives.

That particular opponent dealt with, they moved on to the less dangerous part of their mission. A few private houses stood empty and clear of any troll or beast infestations, and the moldering corpses in them were long withered; Emil had learned to be very thankful for that after the business with the ghosts. And books couldn’t attack you unless they fell on you or if you were allergic to dust.

“Hey. Hey, Emil. Look what _I_ found.”

Or unless they were in the hands of a grinning Sigrun. Emil felt his stomach drop and tried desperately for levity, aiming a teasing smirk her way. “I thought you didn’t like books.”

Her grin really was disturbingly pointy. “I don’t, but there are books and then there are _fun_ books, you know? And you might like this one.”

Emil eyed it. It was slim and black, with the weirdly flexible cardboard covers that had been very popular in the old world and rarely seemed to survive. This one had—mostly intact, even—but with the way Sigrun was holding it, he couldn’t make out the title. “What is it?”

She handed it to him. Too late, he noticed the way her grin had somehow widened.

He read the faded title and frowned. _Hide This Finnish Book?_ Experimentally, he opened it to a random page—and choked on his own spit, feeling heat race into his cheeks. “I—what— _Sigrun!”_

She leaned over to look, slinging a companionable arm around his shoulder as she read. “Whaaaat? You’re gonna be a married man, you should know words like this. I’m just looking out for you, like a good superior officer should.”

He jerked away, giving her his dirtiest look as he slammed the book down on the nearest dust-covered shelf. _Yes, alright, vocabulary like this could really come in handy with Lalli if I can manage to actually say any of it, but…_ “You are _horrible_.”

Utterly unfazed, she leaned against what might have once been a side table and raised an eyebrow at him. “So you don’t want it?”

Speech failed him. Honestly, the prospect of a book of dirty words was intriguing—Lalli was usually nearly silent when they managed to grab time alone, but sometimes he hissed things between his teeth that sounded like the most obscene sort of prayers, and Emil desperately wanted to know what he was saying. He’d be damned if he admitted that to anyone but his fiancé, though. _Especially_ Sigrun.

Who was still talking, shrugging one shoulder casually as though her words weren’t sending ice down Emil’s spine. “I could give it to Lalli instead—”

He choked at the images that flashed across his mind. “Oh my _god_.”

“Wouldn’t it help?” And she had the nerve to waggle her eyebrows.

Stiff with mortification, he ground out, “We don’t need help, thank you.”

“Eh, suit yourself.” She was already wandering away, heading into the next room. “Hey, I found some more books; they look like they’re in good condition, too!”

As he followed her, grateful for the shift in her attention, he didn’t notice the empty space on the shelf where the book had been.

\--

Today looked like a relatively nice, easy excursion into the field, and Lalli was glad for it. In a few weeks, they would be on their way home, and if the bridge back to the Known World wasn’t fixed he didn’t want to have to deal with still-healing injuries _and_ ocean travel at the same time.

As he strode out of the building they’d just finished checking and turned towards the tank, he heard Sigrun’s footsteps behind him. She had to have learned to move silently at some point, but she never seemed to actually do it unless they were in combat; she walked as though she had some sort of personal grudge against the ground.

At least her voice was quiet, even as her abrupt invasion of his personal space made him want to claw his skin off. “Pssst, Lalli!”

He didn’t bother to hide his frown; if she was whispering, something weird was going on. “Mrr?”

Oh, she was pressing a book into his hands. It was fragile, but seemed to be in good condition; it was so thin, though, that he doubted there could be anything useful in it. “Here.”

Slowly, he turned the book over to get a look at the front cover. He noticed the colors first, bright red on black, before realizing that it was in Swedish and—with only a little bit of mental effort—he could understand what it said. Slowly, not wanting to get his hopes up, he turned a few random pages and felt heat creep into his face. _Oh, gods._

Even without lifting his head, he knew Sigrun was grinning at him. “It’s late, but happy Yule.”

 _Happy Yule, indeed._ Lalli couldn’t help but smirk as the realization of what kind of incredible gift Sigrun had just given him sank in. Sure, he and Emil didn’t really _need_ words; they could manage very well without them (very well indeed, if you asked him) but the proper vocabulary could only help. There were a lot of things he’d been wanting to tell his fiancé, none of which could be found in Tuuri’s phrasebooks.

(He’d found _I love you_ buried very far in the back of the one she’d been using and it had been like Yule coming early, but it wasn’t enough.)

As he slipped it carefully into his pocket, he wondered whether he should show it to Emil. On one hand, he knew that he didn’t like surprises himself, and had no idea whether Emil would. On the other hand…well. Emil was _really_ cute when he was flushed and flustered.

It was the memory of how Emil had thanked him for the runo he’d written (pulling him behind a tree, mouth on his and hands absolutely _everywhere_ , leaving him a shivery mess when they’d finished) that decided it.

He found Emil on the way back to the tank and said absolutely nothing as they walked.

\--

Over the next two days, Emil found himself thinking about that book. _I should have gone back and taken it with me. Why didn’t I take it with me?_ Wanting to not be mortally embarrassed by Sigrun’s smirking suddenly didn’t seem like such a good reason anymore, not when there was the option of learning words that with any luck would make Lalli blush.

When he woke up late one morning to find Lalli curled over a book, at first he was almost too tired for the sight to register—and then it crashed into his mind with an accompanying jolt of adrenaline, because he recognized that cover. _How did he—oh, I’m going to kill Sigrun._ The urge to murder wasn’t strong, however, and it faded as he lay there and watched Lalli turn pages with the complete lack of expression that suggested whatever he was reading was far too engrossing to risk being interrupted. He hadn’t noticed him yet—he was far too absorbed in whatever was making his ears turn that delicate shade of pink—and it gave Emil time to consider what he was going to do about it.

“What are you reading?”

Lalli jolted, face red, and made a sound that was almost a squeak.

God, Lalli was adorable; he couldn’t help but be a little smug that he’d caused that reaction, and he smirked as he asked, “Is it any good?”

Lalli turned to look at him, one eyebrow raising delicately as he laid the book down. “…It is. You should read it.”

He sucked in a breath, heat racing through his veins. “Why don’t you read it to me?”

“I want to show you.”

He had a moment to think— _oh god yes_ —before Lalli shifted, rolling up and onto his bunk to kiss him hard. Instinctively he wrapped his arms around him, pulling him closer; Lalli went willingly, hands sliding up under his shirt as Emil pressed a leg between his thighs. Bare hands on his bare skin felt like fire, searing all the way through him, and he was very glad that they were alone in the tank because if Lalli stopped he thought he might die.

When Lalli drew away to breathe, “I _want_ you,” in nearly flawless Swedish, he knew he was going to die, insofar as it was possible to die of lust.

Before he did, though, he was going to see if he couldn’t leave Lalli in the same state. There wasn’t a lot of space in his bunk, but there was enough for him to roll them both over so that Lalli was on top of him, leaving him free to work his hands under Lalli’s shirt and scratch almost delicate lines along his spine, reveling in the way he arched and shivered under his touch. “I’m all yours.”

Lalli’s eyes gleamed. “Good.”

And then he was dipping his head and nibbling along his throat, and Emil barely managed to stifle a moan. Maybe this position was ill-considered; true, it was easier for him to run his hands over Lalli’s back the way he liked, but he was at Lalli’s mercy, and among Lalli’s many fine qualities “mercy” was not exactly one of them. He could be deliciously focused when there was something he wanted, and right now he very clearly wanted him. Teeth nipped at his bare skin, pleasure just short of pain sending arousal uncoiling down his spine; when he shifted to grind their hips together Emil almost whimpered before dragging his nails down Lalli’s spine in return.

Lalli bucked against him, hissing something in Finnish that was definitely profane and which Emil thought he could understand if he could just get his brain working. His voice was rough with desire as he continued in shaky Swedish. “You feel so hot.”

“Ngh.” Dear god, and he’d thought Lalli’s Finnish was hot. Swedish, spoken like _that_ , seemed to send all his blood racing downward, and he shuddered and rolled his hips against the very clear evidence of Lalli being just as afflicted. Words deserted him in favor of actions; sliding his hands into the waistband of Lalli’s pants to get a decent handful of his ass was a much more effective way to show his appreciation, anyway.

And it made Lalli growl and mouth a mark into the side of his neck, one hand burying itself in Emil’s hair, which was always a plus. In between dealing out bites and kisses he was murmuring in Finnish, flowing words that Emil couldn’t even guess at—but he thought he caught _beautiful_ somewhere in there, which made his heart skip a beat.

When Lalli slid his other hand down Emil’s side, he sucked in a breath and managed a whisper of, “Talk to me. Like that.”

Lalli smiled against his skin and did exactly as he asked.

For once, nobody interrupted them.

\--

“Has anyone seen Emil…?”

Sigrun noted the absence of two of their team and grinned to herself as she ate. _I guess Twigs put the book to good use after all. I knew I made the right choice._ Though she hated to even admit it to herself, part of her had been…not worried, because she never ever wasted time worrying. Call it “concerned” instead. It had been a while since she’d met anyone as dramatic and easily flustered as Emil; even the greenest rookies in Dalsnes had usually had most of their shame and unearned bravado knocked out of them by the time they were of military age.

And Lalli was just…weird. She’d made the mistake of saying so within earshot of Tuuri; the brief flash of absolute fury on their little skald’s face before she tamped it down had made her decide to never do it again. Nevertheless, it was true. He stared down trolls and giants without blinking, commanded magic far beyond her understanding, and willingly went out alone into the darkness of the Silent World—and yet he hissed and tried to hide from loud noises, paid almost no attention to anything other than his job, and needed to be reminded to use words. There was no telling what he’d make of such a personal gift, even one given in good faith.

She set her bowl down, belatedly realizing that Tuuri had asked a question. “He’s probably fucking your cousin—”

“Oh, _why_ did you have to give me that mental image?!” Tuuri handed her bowl to Reynir, looking revolted. “Really, why?”

She turned her grin on her. “How are you gonna feel when they get married?”

“I won’t be _sharing a tank_ with them!”

The tank door slid open as Lalli ambled out, loose-limbed and lazy. He looked like the cat that had gotten the cream, the canary, and possibly an entire tuna. Possibly the tuna had fought back, because the more Sigrun looked at him the more she was sure there was the edge of a bite mark visible above his collar.

She held out her hand in the unmistakable gesture of someone asking for a high-five. He only stared at her, but that was alright. One day she was sure he’d get the hint.

(After a while, she decided it didn’t matter. He’d come to understand her intentions in his heart, even if he never returned her enthusiasm.)


	9. family ties

Torbjörn looked up into the clear sky and ran his hand through his hair as though it would force down the nervousness bubbling up through him. It had been three months since he’d seen his precious nephew—three long months of only radio contact, listening to his and Tuuri’s reports of books and combat with mounting worry. Siv had fretted for hours when they’d heard he’d been injured, even though he’d assured them it wasn’t serious.

And now he was returning a soon-to-be rich man, with a fiancé who, from all reports, loved him dearly. Torbjörn wondered how he had changed, if he was still the cocky young man that had only wanted to become a famous hero or if his time in the Silent World had seen him growing up a bit more.

“I can’t believe it.”

He tilted his head to look at Siv over his shoulder, taking her hand as she approached. “Honey, did you really doubt it? He _is_ ours.”

“Yes, that’s what concerns me.” But she was almost smiling as she said it, lacing her fingers through his. “Honestly, the part that’s really unbelievable is just…I can’t believe it all came together so easily. Any minute now something’s going to come in and screw it up.”

He winced. “God, don’t say that, you’ll jinx us.”

As the quarantine ship drew steadily closer, he heard Onni mutter, “As long as my family’s safe, you can jinx us all you like—hnf!” Without turning around, he had a feeling Trond had just kicked their mage in the ankle.

A distant voice reached his ears over the dull roar that seemed to be the standard level of noise around the base. He couldn’t make out the words, but it contained harmonics that clanged down into his bones and made his blood run cold. _Oh, no. Oh gods, no! Not here!_

Siv’s grip on his fingers tightened to the point of pain. “Torbjörn? Dear?”

He made himself take a deep breath. “Yes, honey?”

“Please tell me I’m not hearing what I think I’m hearing.”

“What’s the matter?”

Onni sounded worried, as well he should. Torbjörn squeezed his eyes shut and concentrated on breathing—in, out, in, out, in—before he let himself answer. “My brother and his wife are here. Emil’s parents.”

Onni growled. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Taru stiffen and wondered why before the answer came to him—right, she was a distant cousin of the Hotakainens. The cautiously optimistic note in her voice rang false to his ears. “It’s a big place. Maybe they won’t run into us, and we’ll be able to collect our team and leave.”

Siv muttered, “And maybe the moon is made of green cheese.”

Torbjörn barely heard her. His ears were tuned to any hint of his brother’s voice on the wind; for a moment he heard nothing aside from the usual hustle and bustle around them, and he thought they would be fine.

The next moment shattered his hopes.

“Oh, _there_ you are! We’ve been looking _everywhere_ for you.”

Slowly, he turned to look his brother in the face, pasting on the most polite smile he could. “Well, you’ve found us. May I present Onni Hotakainen, Taru Hollola, and General Trond Andersen? It is my _great_ pleasure to introduce you all to my brother, Thorulf Västerström, and his wife Marta.” As the obligatory round of handshakes went out, he had to fight back a smirk at the sight of Thorulf wincing in Onni’s bone-crushing grip. _Serves you right._

Irritatingly, Thorulf didn’t seem to be especially cowed by it once he shook some feeling back into his fingers. “A pleasure to meet you all. We’re _so_ glad to be here on this momentous occasion. I have to admit, I didn’t think you’d pull it off, but it seems your little moneymaking scheme will bear fruit after all. I’m proud of you, baby brother.”

Secretly, he had been proud of himself right up until Thorulf’s words; as they sank in, the quiet triumph turned to ash in his soul. He felt sick, but managed to force out the obligatory reply. “…Thank you.”

You had to call the expression on Siv’s face a smile, because the corners of her mouth were turned up. “How did you get here, may I ask? The train’s not for the public.”

He was shorter than Torbjörn, with a badly darned suit and greying hair, but Thorulf drew himself up with the same self-assured expression he’d worn when they were young and rich. “I told them our only son was on a mission in the Silent World, and they very graciously agreed to let us board.”

 _Your son?_ Torbjörn clenched his fists, but before he could say any of the objections that sprang to mind— _you disowned him three months ago and you barely even spoke to him for two years before that, you think you can just waltz in here and make everything smooth again_ —Marta adjusted her grip on her handbag and spoke up.

Her soft voice sent a chill through him. Once upon a time, he’d thought she was a very nice woman to have as a sister-in-law, but that had been before he’d had the chance to really appreciate the way she delivered even the nastiest comments in a sweetly cultured tone.

“After all, if he’s survived, our sweet son could be a hero now! I never thought I’d see the day.”

 _If?_ If _he’s—_ Torbjörn sucked in a breath; he was almost speechless until rage brought words with it. “You don’t even know if he’s alive. There was nothing, nothing at all, stopping you from contacting us at any point for news of him. You never even asked.”

“We’ve heard enough. Your letter was very informative.” Thorulf met Torbjörn’s gaze coldly. “Honestly, I thought better of you.”

Stunned outrage hit him like a hammer. “Thought better—of _me?”_

Thorulf had the nerve to shrug, lifting his hands as though there was nothing he could have possibly done otherwise. “He seems to be closest to you. We thought surely you could dissuade him from this foolishness; you can’t possibly think he’s making the right decision.”

Siv snapped, “We’ve spoken to him every other day since he left—and his fiancé, too, who is a very nice young man. I think he’s making an _excellent_ decision.”

“Siv, dear.” Marta had taken a step back, eyes wide, but her voice was as even as if she was commenting on the weather. “Our only son is about to marry a Finnish heathen. Can you blame us for being concerned?”

“You’d rest easy if you ever bothered to talk to him! Perhaps if you tried to raise your own son, _dear_ , you wouldn’t be so surprised by who he chooses to love.” The venom in Siv’s voice could have killed a score of trolls, and in that moment Torbjörn adored her.

“We only wanted what’s best for him! He’s our son, he deserves better than—than some crazy backwater scout that thinks he has magic powers!”

He was suddenly fiercely glad that Thorulf only spoke Swedish. Onni looked angry enough without understanding what was being said. Torbjörn’s own blood was boiling, and he had to stop and breathe for a moment before he gave into the urge to knock his brother’s teeth out.

Even so, his voice came out in a snarl. “Oh, so he’s _your_ son now? He’s your son, your pride and joy whom you love more than your own breath. That’s fascinating, really. I don’t recall him being your son when we told you he was getting married!”

Thorulf opened and closed his mouth, gaping like a fish. “I…”

A faint grinding noise caught his attention. With sudden horrible clarity, he heard the door slide open behind them; there was just enough time to think _oh, fuck_ before Emil’s voice dropped into the silence.

_“What?”_

\--

The quarantine boat had _sucked_. The food was lousy, they’d had doctors hovering around them at every turn, and since they’d been in separate cells there had been nothing Emil could do when the rocking of the hull made Lalli sick. When they’d finally made it to dry land, Lalli hadn’t protested when he offered him an arm to lean on; even as they crossed the bridge, he suspected it was most of what was keeping his fiancé upright.

And then he’d heard his uncle’s voice as they approached the best of the base, and it had stopped him in his tracks.

Emil rocked back on his heels as the words sank in, leaving a cold pit where his insides had been. For a split second he was afraid he would fall to his knees before Lalli’s hand tightened on his arm, anchoring him in place until some of the shock ebbed away. “Uncle Torbjörn, what the hell…?” He almost didn’t recognize his own voice; it seemed to be coming from a long way off.

Torbjörn swallowed hard, turning white—and then flushing with anger as he waved a hand at his brother. “Ask him what he did. Ask him how he reacted when I wrote to tell him you were engaged. ”

Even when he’d told his parents he was joining the Cleansers, his father had only gone thin-lipped and snappish. He’d never seen him look worried before. “Son, really, it’s not a big deal, there’s no need for anyone to get upset…”

He squared his shoulders, taking a step forward; he was suddenly very aware of his friends forming a solid wall behind him, Lalli so tense by his side that the mage was practically vibrating. “I don’t think I have to ask him. I heard what you said. What’s the matter, father? You don’t approve of my fiancé?” He wondered why he wasn’t crying yet. Maybe the tears took a while to form.

His father gestured at Lalli, raising an eyebrow incredulously. “You’re shackling yourself to a pagan savage, and you expect us to be okay with it?”

As he watched comprehension and anger dawn in succession across Lalli’s face, rage flooded his veins. “How _dare_ you.”

“Please, if you know a better way to describe someone who actually thinks _magic_ is real—”

Tuuri sucked in a furious breath; before she could tear into him, Emil raised his voice. “Magic or no magic, I love him and I’m going to marry him! I realize it’s been a while since you’ve seen me, but I’m an adult now, and you have no right to pass judgement on who I choose to spend my life with.”

Now his father looked afraid, and some part of Emil’s heart warmed to see it. “I’m sure he has his fine points, but he’s hardly the sort of man for a hero like yourself to marry—”

 _Oh. That’s why._ He wasn’t even surprised. “I see. It all makes sense; now that I’m a hero, now you suddenly care. Now that I’m making money, now you care! You didn’t give a fuck when I joined the Cleansers or when I went off to the Silent World, but when you think I might damage the family reputation, what I do with my life magically turns into the most important thing in the world!”

“Emil, _language_.”

He turned a furious glare on his mother. “Mother, really? That’s what you’re focusing on right now?”

“Well, I—”

He ignored her, head swiveling back just in time to catch his father backing away. “Well? What do you have to say about this?”

“I had _thought_ that, since we raised you, you might be willing to see sense for the good of the family. But I can see you’re…upset.” Thorulf ran a hand over his beard, gaze darting around the bridge. “If you want, we shall never speak to you again.”

Emil took another step forward, glaring into his father’s eyes. He was as tall as him now, and when had that happened? “Running away, you mean? I won’t let you do that, not after this shit.”

Thorulf blinked at him. “I thought that was what you wanted.”

“ _No_. Here is what you’re going to do. You two are going to apologize to the Hotakainens, and you will not say a single word against Finland, its people, or its mages. And you’ll pay for the wedding, or you won’t see so much as a krona from me for anything else!”

The seconds ticked by as his father stared at him, shock written across his face. Finally he took a deep breath…

…And smiled, thin and sharp as a knife. “A ruthless bargain. You truly are my son.”

Emil thought he might throw up.

In the sudden silence, Siv didn’t need to raise her voice to be heard. “No. You’re _our_ son.”

Sigrun’s voice followed hers; it would sound almost casual if Emil didn’t know what her barely-concealed anger sounded like. “Herr Västerström, right? I think you and your wife had better leave now; my little Viking probably wouldn’t like it if I punched his dad in the face.”

“…Should do it anyway.” That was Tuuri, not quite under her breath.

Marta turned away, but Thorulf seemed to find some innate source of composure; his face settled into an almost convincing expression of shame as he held out a hand. “Forgive me, I acted wrongly. Please accept my apology, Herr Hotakainen?”

Lalli stared flatly at him. “No.”

As he gaped, Torbjörn grabbed the back of his collar and forcibly spun him around. “You are _leaving_. Emil, everyone, I’m really sorry about all this, I had no idea he was going to show up. He won’t bother you again.”

“I…” Emil swallowed past the lump that had belatedly formed in his throat. “Aunt Siv, did you mean that?”

In answer, she strode over and pulled him into a tight hug. “Of course I did. You were practically one of my kids anyway.”

With his arms pinned, he couldn’t scrub a hand across his eyes, so he settled for blinking instead. It didn’t help much. “…Oh.” There didn’t seem to be much else to say to that; words were a paltry way to express the shock still coursing through him, and he refused to sob in front of his friends.

Lalli’s voice was very quiet, but when Emil wriggled around to look at him, he realized he was smiling. “It is nice to meet you, mother-in-law.”

He closed his eyes, leaning his forehead against Siv’s shoulder. _At least Lalli doesn’t seem upset anymore, but I swear I could kill my parents…_

An unfamiliar voice—probably Onni, he thought—was asking questions in Finnish. Emil let them wash over him along with Lalli’s grumpy responses until fingers tapped his shoulder lightly. Lalli sounded like he was rolling his eyes. “Onni wants to know if you still want to marry me.”

Emil took a slow breath and pulled away from Siv’s hug, meeting Onni’s gaze. Lalli’s cousin was broader and more solid than he’d thought, but neither his build nor his steady glare was capable of striking fear into Emil’s heart anymore. Pulling up his reserves of Finnish, he answered, “ _Yes_.”

When Onni nodded, relief swept through him; at least his and Lalli’s union seemed to have the support of _one_ full side of the family. And even if his mother and father never came around, he had the best aunt and uncle in the world.

(When they admitted later that they’d known about his parents’ reaction since November, he couldn’t even be too upset. Especially since it turned out that in all that time Lalli had never realized that Siv and Torbjörn’s children would technically be his new siblings-in-law, and his face was priceless enough that Tuuri was moved to immortalize it on film.)


	10. epilogue: i wanna marry you

The wedding had to be _perfect_. Every last detail had to be right; an event like this only came once a lifetime as far as Emil was concerned, and he wasn’t going to fuck it up. He refused to even entertain the possibility.

But gods, there were so many ways he could fail.

He rubbed his forehead as he stared down at the seating chart, trying to think through the fog of exhaustion. _I can’t seat the Andersens next to the Eide-Andersens because they hate each other. If I don’t separate the Madsens out per table they’ll start a fight, and I can’t sit them anywhere near the Hollolas after that time at the harvest festival._ Frowning, he rearranged a few squares of the color-coded papers he was using to mark everyone’s places. It was hard to focus when so many other things called for his attention—table linens, flowers, and he couldn’t even remember if he’d finalized the menus yet—but after an eternity of shuffling he thought he’d prevented a few minor wars.

The couch beckoned, but he sighed and turned to stare out of the kitchen window instead, propping his chin in his hand. The street below the Mora apartment he shared with Lalli was bustling, but he couldn’t spot his fiancé’s silvery hair in the crowd. He was planning the wedding alone for now.

A flash of irritation sparked in his heart, but was blown out just as soon as it had arisen; Lalli had _offered_ to help him set everything up, and he had turned him down. He knew well enough by now that Lalli barely tolerated the whole thing because he loved him, and he certainly wasn’t going to subject him to this hell willingly.

 _At least my parents are paying._ Even after two years, he still couldn’t really think of Siv and Torbjörn as his parents, though they were in every sense except biologically. The couple who had brought him into the world, and who he dutifully sent cards to every Yule even when Lalli hissed grumpily at them, would be footing the entire bill for what promised to be the most lavish wedding ceremony and reception Mora had ever seen. As far as he was concerned, if they insisted on valorizing their son as one of the Heroes of the Silent World, then they could do no less. The high society of the Known World would flay them alive otherwise.

Huh. He supposed he and his friends _were_ high society now, or at least part of it. He had his face on Cleanser recruitment posters; Tuuri and Mikkel spent so much time in Reykjavik talking to their fellow academics that they sometimes lapsed into Icelandic without realizing it. He and Lalli had been forced to learn some just to keep up. Sigrun, now Major Eide, had refused on principle.

Lalli had taken the money, but refused all honors; with what their expeditions continued to rake in, they could probably have afforded a mansion, but he preferred solitude. Emil had almost _wanted_ a mansion, but the thought of Lalli having to deal with living in a big house where all the journalists knew where you were had destroyed that idea. They’d taken this apartment instead, and their friends had helped them move in under cover of night. (It had been the most fun he’d had with them outside of an expedition in _months_.)

People wore nice suits in this part of town; as he watched them pass, his mind wandered. _Does Lalli remember we need to be at the tailor’s for our suit fittings tomorrow? Gods, he looks gorgeous in it already, I don’t know how I’m going to survive when it fits better. It’s too bad I can’t get him in a tux._ He hadn’t even bothered suggesting the idea; Lalli had been wrestled into a tuxedo at their first grand reception in Reykjavik, and he’d been so uncomfortable in it the entire night that Emil couldn’t imagine being cruel enough to make him go through it a second time. Even if he had looked gorgeous.

Huffing a little—the wooden chairs they’d bought for their kitchen had a disagreeable tendency to make his ass fall asleep if he sat down in them for too long—he got to his feet and headed over to the refrigerator for a beer. It would probably help; if nothing else, it might take his mind off the wedding. _White and pale blue, you would think that’d be easy, but there are so many different shades of white…ugh, and they all have to match._

He took a sip of beer and felt a little better; the shocking cold cleared his mind of color schemes. Besides, the wedding was still months away. They would have time to figure it all out.

Keys jingled as the door opened. He looked up just as Lalli walked in with both hands full of groceries and his sleeves rolled up to the elbows. The tiny smile hovering around his mouth was almost invisible, but Emil knew it was there. “Hey.”

His world went soft around the edges, and he set his beer down on the counter to greet his lover with a brief kiss. “Oh, honey. Did they have that bread you like?”

Lalli purred, nuzzling his cheek before pulling away to set the groceries down. “Mm-hmm.”

For a while, they shuffled around the kitchen putting food away in companionable silence. Lalli was the first to break it. “What’ve you been doing?”

“…” His sigh came up from his toes as he dumped a bunch of celery in the vegetable drawer. “Seating chart.”

He didn’t need to look to know that Lalli was making a face. “ _Mrr_. Why?”

The lettuce didn’t seem to want to fit in the drawer; irritably, he banged it a few times to get it to close. Something crunched faintly as it finally slid shut. “You know who’s going to be there.”

“The swarms?”

“Mmm.”

Lalli groaned. “Reynir told me that only twenty people are coming from his side. ‘Only,’ he said.”

Emil couldn’t help but wince. What had started as a fun idea—they had nearly unlimited cash, why not invite their friends’ whole families since they didn’t have much of their own?—had ballooned horribly once they realized the full extent of Sigrun, Mikkel’s, and Reynir’s family trees. He hadn’t realized there _were_ such things as fifth cousins thrice removed, nor that it was possible to have generational feuds based on what their ancestors had said about your great-grandmother. “At least it’s only for a day, and there’ll be enough food to distract them.”

Lalli eyed him. “No kids, right?”

He straightened up, turning to meet his gaze. “Would I do that to you?”

“I don’t know; you _like_ the Norns.”

Though the thought of his cousins always brought a smile to his face, he shook his head, crossing the room to wrap his arms around his fiancé from behind. “I wouldn’t make you put up with them on our wedding day, honey. And they’ve gotten better!”

Lalli sighed and relaxed against him, nestling into his hold. “Hrmph. Are we still going to dinner with them tonight?”

He dropped his head onto Lalli’s shoulder. “If the fucking florists have called me back by then, yeah.”

“Ugh. Do we _need_ flowers?”

 _Lalli has a point, but…_ “Just think about the looks on my parents’ faces when they get the bill.”

“Siv and Torbjörn aren’t paying for it, I thought.”

He grinned, giving Lalli a squeeze. “You know what I mean!”

“I cannot believe you forgot your own parents. You’re terrible.”

Lalli’s teasing warmed his heart; as he tilted his head to pepper the back of his neck with kisses, all thoughts of his responsibilities faded to the back of his mind. They would resurface later, but for now—for this one spring afternoon in their kitchen, warm and content with the love of his life in his arms—he had better things to do.

\--

“—so he spent two hours on the phone with the caterer yesterday.”

Tuuri tilted her head, setting down her cup of mint tea. She’d been the one to institute monthly visits to the café; Lalli hadn’t been too enthused at first, but he’d grown fond of the pastries and his cousin was nice in small doses, even if she didn’t seem to be grasping the gravity of the situation. “Doesn’t he usually do that?”

Lalli grumpily shoved a cookie in his mouth, chewing without really noticing the taste. “He got up in the middle of the night to make sure we’d ordered the right cakes. Every other word out of his mouth nowadays is about the wedding.”

She considered that. “At least you’ll only have to put up with it for a few more weeks. Is he driving you nuts yet?”

He huffed, raking his fingers through his hair. “I think he’s driving himself nuts, too.” That was a lie, really; he _knew_ Emil was stressing himself out. When they slept, and he felt the edges of Emil’s dreamscape pressing into his, he could sometimes catch glimpses of his dreams. They were a confusing haze of flowers and favors, decorations and invitations, and a looming sense of subconscious panic that made him a little sick even to know about.

Her fingers tapped out a rhythm on the edge of her cup. “…Maybe you shouldn’t do this.”

His head snapped up, meeting her gaze. She looked serious for once, eyes cool and calculating. “What?”

His bafflement must have shown on his face, because she blinked and held up a hand. “I don’t mean you shouldn’t get married! Just…not like this. Have the party for everyone else, but just…elope or something, have it done quickly and privately.”

He blinked slowly, thinking. “Maybe.” It was definitely tempting; Emil had been planning the wedding for a solid year, and it wasn’t the first time he’d entertained the idea of grabbing him and running off like a thief in the night. He’d never given it serious consideration before—but then again, “before” hadn’t seen his fiancé this fretful. Emil seemed to get worse as the wedding loomed.

Tuuri beamed at him. “You should! Oh, and if you need a witness…”

“I couldn’t ask anyone else.”

Her face softened, but then she paused and eyed him. “You really can’t, not if you actually want it to be a secret. I mean, I _guess_ you could ask Onni…”

Lalli snorted, a habit he’d picked up from Sigrun and that Tuuri always said made him sound like a truck backfiring. “He’ll cry.”

“He’ll cry anyway.”

He made a face. “At least I won’t have to see it.”

“…Fair point.” Her smile returned. “So, you’ll do it?”

“I’ll ask Emil.” He thought for a moment. No, he couldn’t let the situation continue any longer. “Tonight.”

\--

He waited until after dinner; Emil had done the prep work but he had done the actual cooking, and so by agreement they were washing the dishes together. It was a good time to bring stuff up, especially since…well. No matter how much Emil clearly hated organizing their wedding, he was as stubborn as a moose when it came to changing his mind.

When Emil picked up the last spoon—nothing sharp or breakable, Lalli knew he had a tendency to drop things when he was startled—he took his chance and set his dishrag down. “Emil?”

“Mrr?”

He took a breath, resting a hand on Emil’s arm. His heartbeat thudded too harshly in his chest, but he made himself focus past it. “Run away with me.”

The spoon fell from Emil’s shaking hands with a clatter. _“What?”_

Now that he had gotten the most important words out, the rest flowed more easily, spilling out in a torrent. “Tonight, if you want. We’ll get married privately, without all _this_.”

Emil was still staring at him. “But the reception—the venue—”

He huffed, moving to take Emil’s hand properly; even as stunned as he was, Emil curled wet fingers around his own. “Our friends and family can have their party. We just don’t have to be there.”

Slowly, Emil turned red. “You…want to elope. With me.”

Really, his love could be incredibly slow on the uptake sometimes. Lalli bit back the frustrated sigh that wanted to escape. “ _Yes_ , I want to elope with you. I love you and I want to marry you, and I’d have to be blind not to notice how much you’ve been panicking over all the stupid shit you think we need for this wedding.”

Emil looked away, smoothing back a lock of hair that had escaped from the ponytail he’d tied it in to keep it out of his face. “I wanted it to be perfect…”

Lalli squeezed his fingers lightly, making Emil turn back to face him. “It’d be perfect as long as we’re together. I don’t need anything else.”

Emil sucked in a slow breath. “…Tonight, you said?”

He nodded.

“Let me get dressed.”

He couldn’t stop himself from grinning; he knew he probably looked like an idiot, but he didn’t care. “I’ll wash the rest of the dishes. Don’t spend an hour picking out a suit, you’re not going to be wearing it for long.”

Emil was blushing as he pulled away and dried his hands, but he smiled at Lalli’s words. “Oh, I hope not.”

By the time Lalli finished with the dishes and put in a quick call to Tuuri— _he said yes, come meet us at the city hall_ —he was back, and wearing a finely tailored burgundy suit. The contrast set off the blueness of his eyes, made his hair shine like gold, and for a long little while all Lalli could do was stare at him dry-mouthed. “Gods above.”

Emil flushed. “What? Do I look stupid? I could change—”

“No, you’re _perfect_.” He crossed the room to him, taking his hands. “And I love you.”

There was still some redness in his cheeks, but Emil’s smile was as radiant as the sun. “I love you too. Let’s go get married.”

(And so they were, and it was good.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> IT'S DONE. This is the first multichapter fic I've finished in years, and I'm so proud of myself.


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